The WomanThou Gavest Me

Being the Story of Mary O'Neill

By HALL CAINE

Author of "The Prodigal Son, " Etc. 

[Illustration]

Published August, 1913

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

_How much of the story of Mary O'Neill is a work of my own imagination, and how much comes from an authentic source I do not consider itnecessary to say. But as I have in this instance drawn more largely anddirectly from fact than is usually the practice of the novelist, I havethought it my duty to defeat all possible attempts at personalidentification by altering and disguising the more important scenes andcharacters. Therefore this novel is not to be understood as referring toany living person or persons, and the convent school described in it isnot to be identified with any similar educational institution in Rome_. 

MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR

_Here are the Memoranda we have talked about. Do as you like with them. Alter, amend, add to or take away from them, exactly as you think best. They were written in the first instance for my own eye alone, and hencethey take much for granted which may need explanation before they can beput to the more general uses you have designed for them. Make suchexplanation in any way you consider suitable. It is my wish that in thismatter your judgment should be accepted as mine. The deep feeling youcould not conceal when I told you the story of my dear one's life givesme confidence in your discretion. 

Whatever the immediate effect may be, I feel that in the end I shall bejustified--fully justified--in allowing the public to look for a littlewhile into the sacred confessional of my darling's stainless heart. 

I heard her voice again to-day. She was right--love is immortal. Godbless her! My ever lovely and beloved one!_

CONTENTS

THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL

 PAGE FIRST PART: MY GIRLHOOD 1 SECOND PART: MY MARRIAGE 97 THIRD PART: MY HONEYMOON 135 FOURTH PART: I FALL IN LOVE 210 FIFTH PART: I BECOME A MOTHER 308 SIXTH PART: I AM LOST 401 SEVENTH PART: I AM FOUND 505

AUTHOR'S NOTE: _The name Raa (of Celtic origin with many variationsamong Celtic races) is pronounced Rah in Ellan. _

THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL

FIRST PART

MY GIRLHOOD

FIRST CHAPTER

"Out of the depths, O Lord, out of the depths, " begins the mostbeautiful of the services of our church, and it is out of the depths ofmy life that I must bring the incidents of this story. 

I was an unwanted child--unwanted as a girl at all events. Father DanDonovan, our parish priest, told me all about it. I was born in October. It had been raining heavily all day long. The rain was beating hardagainst the front of our house and running in rivers down thewindow-panes. Towards four in the afternoon the wind rose and then theyellow leaves of the chestnuts in the long drive rustled noisily, andthe sea, which is a mile away, moaned like a dog in pain. 

In my father's room, on the ground floor, Father Dan sat by the fire, fingering his beads and listening to every sound that came from mymother's room, which was immediately overhead. My father himself, withhis heavy step that made the house tremble, was tramping to and fro, from the window to the ingle, from the ingle to the opposite wall. Sometimes Aunt Bridget came down to say that everything was going onwell, and at intervals of half an hour Doctor Conrad entered in hisnoiseless way and sat in silence by the fire, took a few puffs from along clay pipe and then returned to his charge upstairs. 

My father's impatience was consuming him. 

"It's long, " he said, searching the doctor's face. 

"Don't worry--above all don't worry, " said Father Dan. 

"There's no need, " said Doctor Conrad. 

"Then hustle back and get it over, " said my father. "It will be fivehundred dollars to you if this comes off all right. "

I think my father was a great man at that time. I think he is still agreat man. Hard and cruel as he may have been to me, I feel bound tosay that for him. If he had been born a king, he would have made hisnation feared and perhaps respected throughout the world. He was born apeasant, the poorest of peasants, a crofter. The little homestead of hisfamily, with its whitewashed walls and straw-thatched roof, still standson the bleak ayre-lands of Ellan, like a herd of mottled cattlecrouching together in a storm. 

His own father had been a wild creature, full of daring dreams, and thechief of them had centred in himself. Although brought up in a mudcabin, and known as Daniel Neale, he believed that he belonged by linealdescent to the highest aristocracy of his island, the O'Neills of theMansion House (commonly called the Big House) and the Barons of CastleRaa. To prove his claim he spent his days in searching the registers ofthe parish churches, and his nights in talking loudly in the villageinn. Half in jest and half in earnest, people called him "Neale theLord. " One day he was brought home dead, killed in a drunken quarrelwith Captain O'Neill, a dissolute braggart, who had struck him over thetemple with a stick. His wife, my grandmother, hung a herring net acrossthe only room of her house to hide his body from the children who sleptin the other bed. 

There were six of them, and after the death of her husband she had tofend for all. The little croft was hungry land, and to make a sufficientliving she used to weed for her more prosperous neighbours. It wasill-paid labour--ninepence a day fine days and sixpence all weathers, with a can of milk twice a week and a lump of butter thrown in now andthen. The ways were hard and the children were the first to feel them. Five of them died. "They weren't willing to stay with me, " she used tosay. My father alone was left to her, and he was another Daniel. As hegrew up he was a great help to his mother. I feel sure he loved her. Difficult as it may be to believe it now, I really and truly think thathis natural disposition was lovable and generous to begin with. 

There is a story of his boyhood which it would be wrong of me not totell. His mother and he had been up in the mountains cutting gorse andling, which with turf from the Curragh used to be the crofter's onlyfuel. They were dragging down a prickly pile of it by a straw rope when, dipping into the high road by a bridge, they crossed the path of asplendid carriage which swirled suddenly out of the drive of the BigHouse behind two high-spirited bays driven by an English coachman ingorgeous livery. The horses reared and shied at the bundle of kindling, whereupon a gentleman inside the carriage leaned out and swore, and thenthe brutal coachman, lashing out at the bare-headed woman with his whip, struck the boy on his naked legs. 

At the next moment the carriage had gone. It had belonged to the head ofthe O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest kinsman, CaptainO'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor grandmother said nothing. But her little son, as soon as his smarting legs would allow, wiped hiseyes with his ragged sleeve and said:

"Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I am aman, and then nobody shall never lash you. "

His mother died. He was twenty years of age at that time, alarge-limbed, lusty-lunged fellow, almost destitute of education butwith a big brain and an unconquerable will; so he strapped his chest andemigrated to America. What work he found at first I never rightly knew. I can only remember to have heard that it was something dangerous tohuman life and that the hands above him dropped off rapidly. Within twoyears he was a foreman. Within five years he was a partner. In ten yearshe was a rich man. At the end of five-and-twenty years he was amillionaire, controlling trusts and corporations and carrying out greatcombines. 

I once heard him say that the money tumbled into his chest like crushedoats out of a crown shaft, but what happened at last was never fullyexplained to me. Something I heard of a collision with the law and of aforced assignment of his interests. All that is material to my story isthat at forty-five years of age he returned to Ellan. He was then achanged man, with a hard tongue, a stern mouth, and a masterful lift ofthe eyebrows. His passion for wealth had left its mark upon him, but thewhole island went down before his face like a flood, and the people whohad made game of his father came crawling to his feet like cockroaches. 

The first thing he did on coming home was to buy up his mother's croft, re-thatch the old house, and put in a poor person to take care of it. 

"Guess it may come handy some day, " he said. 

His next act was worthy of the son of "Neale the Lord. " Finding thatCaptain O'Neill had fallen deeply into debt, he bought up the braggart'smortgages, turned him out of the Big House, and took up his own abode init. 

Twelve months later he made amends, after his own manner, by marryingone of the Captain's daughters. There were two of them. Isabel, theelder, was a gentle and beautiful girl, very delicate, very timid, andmost sweet when most submissive, like the woodland herbs which give outtheir sweetest fragrance when they are trodden on and crushed. Bridget, the younger, was rather homely, rather common, proud of her strength ofmind and will. 

To the deep chagrin of the younger sister, my father selected the elderone. I have never heard that my mother's wishes were consulted. Herfather and my father dealt with the marriage as a question of business, and that was an end of the matter. On the wedding day my father did twothings that were highly significant. He signed the parish register inthe name of Daniel O'Neill by right of Letters Patent; and on taking hisbride back to her early home, he hoisted over the tower of his chillgrey house the stars and stripes of his once adopted country stitched tothe flag of his native island. He had talked less than "Neale the Lord, "but he had thought and acted more. 

Two years passed without offspring, and my father made no disguise ofhis disappointment, which almost amounted to disgust. Hitherto he hadoccupied himself with improvements in his house and estate, but now hisrestless energies required a wider field, and he began to look abouthim. Ellan was then a primitive place, and its inhabitants, halflandsmen, half seamen, were a simple pious race living in a sweetpoverty which rarely descended into want. But my father had magnificentschemes for it. By push, energy and enterprise he would galvanise theisland into new life, build hotels, theatres, casinos, drinking hallsand dancing palaces, lay out race-courses, construct electric railwaysto the tops of the mountains, and otherwise transform the place into aholiday resort for the people of the United Kingdom. 

"We'll just sail in and make this old island hum, " he said, and a numberof his neighbours, nothing loth to be made rich by magic--advocates, bankers and insular councillors--joined hands with him in hisadventurous schemes. 

But hardly had he begun when a startling incident happened. The old LordRaa of Castle Raa, head of the O'Neills, the same that had sworn at mygrandmother, after many years in which he had lived a bad life abroadwhere he had contracted fatal maladies, returned to Ellan to die. Beinga bachelor, his heir would have been Captain O'Neill, but my mother'sfather had died during the previous winter, and in the absence of directmale issue it seemed likely that both title and inheritance (which, bythe conditions of an old Patent, might have descended to the nearestliving male through the female line) would go to a distant relative, aboy, fourteen years of age, a Protestant, who was then at school atEton. 

More than ever now my father chewed the cud of his great disappointment. But it is the unexpected that oftenest happens, and one day in thespring, Doctor Conrad, being called to see my mother, who wasindisposed, announced that she was about to bear a child. 

My father's delight was almost delirious, though at first his happinesswas tempered by the fear that the child that was to be born to him mightnot prove a boy. Even this danger disappeared from his mind after atime, and before long his vanity and his unconquerable will had sotriumphed over his common sense that he began to speak of his unbornchild as a son, just as if the birth of a male child had beenprearranged. With my mother, with Doctor Conrad, and above all withFather Dan, he sometimes went the length of discussing his son's name. It was to be Hugh, because that had been the name of the heads of theO'Neills through all the ages, as far back as the legendary days inwhich, as it was believed, they had been the Kings of Ellan. 

My mother was no less overjoyed. She had justified herself at last, andif she was happy enough at the beginning in the tingling delight of thewoman who is about to know the sweetest of human joys, the joy ofbearing a child, she acquiesced at length in the accepted idea that herchild would be a boy. Perhaps she was moved to this merely by a desireto submit to her husband's will, and to realise his hopes andexpectations. Or perhaps she had another reason, a secret reason, areason that came of her own weakness and timidity as a woman, namely, that the man child to be born of her would be strong and brave and free. 

All went well down to the end of autumn, and then alarming news camefrom Castle Raa. The old lord had developed some further malady and wasbelieved to be sinking rapidly. Doctor Conrad was consulted and he gaveit as his opinion that the patient could not live beyond the year. Thisthrew my father into a fever of anxiety. Sending for his advocate, hetook counsel both with him and with Father Dan. 

"Come now, let us get the hang of this business, " he said; and when herealised that (according to the terms of the ancient Patent) if the oldlord died before his child was born, his high-built hopes would be inthe dust, his eagerness became a consuming fire. 

For the first time in his life his excitement took forms of religion andbenevolence. He promised that if everything went well he would give anew altar to Our Lady's Chapel in the parish church of St. Mary, a tonof coals to every poor person within a radius of five miles, and asupper to every inhabitant of the neighbouring village who was more thansixty years of age. It was even rumoured that he went so far in secretas to provide funds for the fireworks with which some of his flattererswere to celebrate the forthcoming event, and that one form ofillumination was a gigantic frame which, set upon the Sky Hill, immediately in front of our house, was intended to display in brilliantlights the glowing words "God Bless the Happy Heir. " Certainly the birthwas to be announced by the ringing of the big bell of the tower assignal to the country round about that the appointed festivities mightbegin. 

Day by day through September into October, news came from Castle Raa bysecret channels. Morning by morning, Doctor Conrad was sent for to seemy mother. Never had the sun looked down on a more gruesome spectacle. It was a race between the angel of death and the angel of life, with myfather's masterful soul between, struggling to keep back the one and tohasten on the other. 

My father's impatience affected everybody about him. Especially itcommunicated itself to the person chiefly concerned. The result was justwhat might have been expected. My mother was brought to bed prematurely, a full month before her time. 

SECOND CHAPTER

By six o'clock the wind had risen to the force of a hurricane. The lastof the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the barebranches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louderthan ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore, was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes theclashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash ofbillows over the port-holes of a ship at sea. 

"Pity for the poor folk with their fireworks, " said Father Dan. 

"They'll eat their suppers for all that, " said my father. 

It was now dark, but my father would not allow the lamps to be lighted. There was therefore no light in his gaunt room except a sullen glow fromthe fire of peat and logs. Sometimes, in a momentary lull of the storm, an intermittent moan would come from the room above, followed by a dullhum of voices. 

"Guess it can't be long now, " my father would say. 

"Praise the Lord, " Father Dan would answer. 

By seven the storm was at its height. The roaring of the wind in thewide chimney was as loud as thunder. Save for this the thunderous noiseof the sea served to drown all sounds on the land. Nevertheless, in themidst of the clamour a loud rapping was heard at the front door. One ofthe maid-servants would have answered it, but my father called her backand, taking up a lantern, went to the door himself. As quietly as hecould for the rush of wind without, he opened it, and pulling it afterhim, he stepped into the porch. 

A man in livery was there on horseback, with another saddled horsebeside him. He was drenched through, but steaming with sweat as if hehad ridden long and hard. Shouting above the roar of the storm, he said:

"Doctor Conrad is here, is he?"

"He is--what of it?" said my father. 

"Tell him he's wanted and must come away with me at once. "

"Who says he must?"

"Lord Raa. His lordship is dangerously ill. He wishes to see the doctorimmediately. "

I think my father must then have gone through a moment of fierceconflict between his desire to keep the old lord alive and his hope ofthe immediate birth of his offspring. But his choice was quickly made. 

"Tell the lord, " he cried, "that a woman is here in child-birth, anduntil she's delivered the doctor cannot come to him. "

"But I've brought a horse, and the doctor is to go back with me. "

"Give the lord my message and say it is Daniel O'Neill who sends it. "

"But his lordship is dying and unless the doctor is there to tap him, hemay not live till morning. "

"Unless the doctor is here to deliver my wife, my child may be deadbefore midnight. "

"What is the birth of your child to the death of his lordship?" criedthe man; but, before the words were well out of his mouth, my father, inhis great strength, had laid hold of the reins and swung both horse andrider round about. 

"Get yourself to the other side of my gate, or I'll fling you into theroad, " he cried; and then, returning to the porch, he re-entered thehouse and clashed the door behind him. 

Father Dan used to say that for some moments more the groom from CastleRaa could be heard shouting the name of the doctor to the lightedwindows of my mother's room. But his voice was swirled away in thewhistling of the wind, and after a while the hoofs of his horses wentchamping over the gravel in the direction of the gate. 

When my father returned to his room, shaking the rain from his hair andbeard, he was fuming with indignation. Perhaps a memory of forty yearsago was seething in his excited brain. 

"The old scoundrel, " he said. "He'd like it, wouldn't he? They'd alllike it! Which of them wants a son of mine amongst them?"

The roaring night outside became yet more terrible. So loud was thenoise from the shore that it was almost as if a wild beast were tryingto liberate itself from the womb of the sea. At one moment Aunt Bridgetcame downstairs to say that the storm was frightening my mother. All theservants of the house were gathered in the hall, full of fear, andtelling each other superstitious stories. 

Suddenly there came a lull. Rain and wind seemed to cease in an instant. The clamour of the sea became less and the tolling of the bell on St. Mary's Rock died away in the distance. It was almost as if the world, which had been whirling through space, suddenly stood still. 

In that moment of silence a deeper moan than usual came from the roomoverhead. My father dropped into a chair, clasped his hands and closedhis eyes. Father Dan rattled his pearl beads and moved his lips, bututtered no sound. 

Then a faint sound came from the room overhead. My father opened hiseyes and listened. Father Dan held his breath. The sound was repeated, but louder, clearer, shriller than before. There could be no mistakingit now. It was Nature's eternal signal that out of the womb of silence aliving soul had been born into the world. 

"It's over, " said my father. 

"Glory be to God and all the Saints!" said Father Dan. 

"That'll beat 'em, " cried my father, and he leapt to his feet andlaughed. 

Going to the door of the room, he flung it open. The servants in thehall were now whispering eagerly, and one of them, the gardener, TomDug, commonly called Tommy the Mate, stepped out and asked if he oughtto ring the big bell. 

"Certainly, " said my father. "Isn't that what you've been standing byfor?"

A few minutes later the bell of the tower began to ring, and it wasfollowed almost immediately by the bell of our parish church, which rangout a merry peal. 

"That'll beat 'em, I say, " cried my father, and laughing in his triumphhe tramped the flagged floor with a firmer step than ever. 

All at once the crying of the child ceased and there was a confusedrumble of voices overhead. My father stopped, his face straightened, andhis voice, which had rung out like a horn, wheezed back like a whistle. 

"What's going doing? Where's Conrad? Why doesn't Conrad come to me?"

"Don't worry. He'll be down presently, " said Father Dan. 

A few minutes passed, in which nothing was said and nothing heard, andthen, unable to bear the suspense any longer, my father went to the footof the staircase and shouted the doctor's name. 

A moment later the doctor's footsteps were heard on the stone stairs. They were hesitating, halting, dragging footsteps. Then the doctorentered my father's room. Even in the sullen light of the peat fire hisface was white, ashen white. He did not speak at first, and there was aninstant of silence, dead silence. Then my father said:

"Well, what is it?"

"It is . . . "

"Speak man! . . . Do you mean it is . . . _dead?_"

"No! Oh no! Not that. "

"What then?"

"It is a girl. "

"A gir . . . Did you say a girl?"

"Yes. 

"My God!" said my father, and he dropped back into the chair. His lipswere parted and his eyes which had been blazing with joy, became fixedon the dying fire in a stupid stare. 

Father Dan tried to console him. There were thistles in everybody'scrop, and after all it was a good thing to have begotten a girl. Girlswere the flowers of life, the joy and comfort of man in his earthlypilgrimage, and many a father who bemoaned his fate when a daughter hadbeen born to him, had lived to thank the Lord for her. 

All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room began tobe illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from thefirework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it could forthe rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its mocking legend, "GodBless the Happy Heir. "

In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over smoothstones, Father Dan went on with his comforting. 

"Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when I thinkof what they suffer that the world may go on, that the generations maynot fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my knees and kiss the feetof the first woman I meet in the street. What would the world be withoutwomen? Think of St. Theresa! Think of the Blessed Margaret Mary! Thinkof the Holy Virgin herself. . . . "

"Oh, stow this stuff, " cried my father, and leaping to his feet, hebegan to curse and swear. 

"Stop that accursed bell! Is the fool going to ring for ever? Put outthose damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of hell tryingto laugh at me?"

With that, and an oath at himself for his folly, my father strode out ofthe room. 

My mother had heard him. Through the unceiled timbers of the floorbetween them the words of his rage had reached her. She was ashamed. Shefelt as if she were a guilty thing, and with a low cry of pain sheturned to the wall and fainted. 

The old lord died the same night. Somewhere towards the dead reaches ofthe dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a month afterwardsthe new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came over to take possessionof his inheritance. 

But long before that my father, scoring out his disappointment like anaccount that was closed, had got to work with his advocates, bankers andinsular councillors on his great schemes for galvanising the old islandinto new life. 

THIRD CHAPTER

Out of the mist and veil of my own memory, as distinguished from FatherDan's, there comes first the recollection of a big room containing a bigbed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with animage of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to which asparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp. 

When I came to recognise and to classify I realised that this was mymother's room, and that the sweet somebody who used to catch me up inher arms when I went tottering on voyages of discovery round the vastplace was my mother herself, and that she would comfort me when I fell, and stroke my head with her thin white hand, while she sang softly androcked me to and fro. 

As I have no recollection of ever having seen my mother in any otherpart of our house, or indeed in any other place except our carriage whenwe drove out in the sunshine, I conclude that from the time of my birthshe had been an invalid. 

Certainly the faces which first emerge from the islands of my memory arethe cheerful and sunny ones of Doctor Conrad and Father Dan. I recallthe soft voice of the one as he used to enter our room after breakfastsaying, "How are we this morning ma'am?" And I remember the still softervoice of the other as he said "And how is my daughter to-day?"

I loved both of them, but especially Father Dan, who used to call me hisNanny and say I was the plague and pet of his life, being as full ofmischief as a goat. He must have been an old child himself, for I haveclear recollection of how, immediately after confessing my mother, hewould go down on all fours with me on the floor and play athide-and-seek around the legs of the big bed, amid squeals and squeaksof laughter. I remember, too, that he wore a long sack coat whichbuttoned close at the neck and hung loose at the skirts, where therewere two large vertical pockets, and that these pockets were mycupboards and drawers, for I put my toys and my doll and even theremnants of my cakes into them to be kept in safe custody until wantedagain. 

My mother called me Mally veen (Mary dear) and out of love of her onlychild she must have weaned me late, for I have vague memories of hersoft white breasts filled with milk. I slept in a little wickerwork cotplaced near her bed, so that she could reach me if I uncovered myself inthe night. She used to say I was like a bird, having something birdlikein my small dark head and the way I held it up. Certainly I remembermyself as a swift little thing, always darting to and fro on tiptoe, andchirping about our chill and rather cheerless house. 

If I was like a bird my mother was like a flower. Her head, which wassmall and fair, and her face, which was nearly always tinged withcolour, drooped forward from her delicate body like a rose from itsstalk. She was generally dressed in black, I remember, but she wore awhite lace collar as well as a coif such as we see in old pictures, andwhen I call her back to my mind, with her large liquid eyes and hersweet soft mouth, I think it cannot be my affection alone, or the magicof my childish memory, which makes me think, after all these years andall the countries I have travelled in, and all the women I have seen, that my darling mother, though so little known and so little loved, wasthe most beautiful woman in the world. 

Even yet I cannot but wonder that other people, my father especially, did not see her with my eyes. I think he was fond of her after his ownfashion, but there was a kind of involuntary contempt in his affection, which could not conceal itself from my quick little eyes. She wasvisibly afraid of him, and was always nervous and timid when he cameinto our room with his customary salutation, "How now, Isabel? And how's this child of yours?"

From my earliest childhood I noticed that he always spoke of me as if Ihad been my mother's child, not his, and perhaps this affected myfeeling for him from the first. 

I was in terror of his loud voice and rough manner, the big bearded manwith the iron grey head and the smell of the fresh air about his thickserge clothes. It was almost as if I had conceived this fear before mybirth, and had brought it out of the tremulous silence of my mother'swomb. 

My earliest recollections are of his muffled shout from the room below, "Keep your child quiet, will you?" when I was disturbing him over hispapers by leaping and skipping about the floor. If he came upstairs whenI was in bed I would dive under the bedclothes, as a duck dives underwater, and only come to the surface when he was gone. I am sure I neverkissed my father or climbed on to his knee, and that during his shortvisits to our room I used to hold my breath and hide my head behind mymother's gown. 

I think my mother must have suffered both from my fear of my father andfrom my father's indifference to me, for she made many efforts toreconcile him to my existence. Some of her innocent schemes, as I recallthem now, seem very sweet but very pitiful. She took pride, forinstance, in my hair, which was jet black even when I was a child, andshe used to part it in the middle and brush it smooth over my foreheadin the manner of the Madonna, and one day, when my father was with us, she drew me forward and said:

"Don't you think our Mary is going to be very pretty? A little like thepictures of Our Lady, perhaps--don't you think so, Daniel?"

Whereupon my father laughed rather derisively and answered:

"Pretty, is she? Like the Virgin, eh? Well, well!"

I was always fond of music, and my mother used to teach me to sing to alittle upright piano which she was allowed to keep in her room, and onanother day she said:

"Do you know our Mary has such a beautiful voice, dear? So sweet andpure that when I close my eyes I could almost think it is an angelsinging. "

Whereupon my father laughed as before, and answered:

"A voice, has she? Like an angel's, is it? What next, I wonder?"

My mother made most of my clothes. There was no need for her to do so, but in the absence of household duties I suppose it stimulated thetenderness which all mothers feel in covering the little limbs theylove; and one day, having made a velvet frock for me, from a design inan old pattern book of coloured prints, which left the legs and neck andarms very bare, she said:

"Isn't our Mary a little lady? But she will always look like a lady, whatever she is dressed in. "

And then my father laughed still more contemptuously and replied, "Her grandmother weeded turnips in the fields though--ninepence a daydry days, and sixpence all weathers. "

My mother was deeply religious, never allowing a day to pass withoutkneeling on her prayer-stool before the image of the Virgin, and one dayI heard her tell my father that when I was a little mite, scarcely ableto speak, she found me kneeling in my cot with my doll perched up beforeme, moving my lips as if saying my prayers and looking up at the ceilingwith a rapt expression. 

"But she has always had such big, beautiful, religious eyes, and Ishouldn't wonder if she becomes a Nun some day!"

"A nun, eh? Maybe so. But I take no stock in the nun business anyway, "said my father. 

Whereupon my mother's lips moved as if she were saying "No, dearest, "but her dear, sweet pride was crushed and she could go no farther. 

FOURTH CHAPTER

There was a whole colony on the ground floor of our house who, like myfather, could not reconcile themselves to my existence, and the head ofthem was Aunt Bridget. 

She had been married, soon after the marriage of my mother, to oneColonel MacLeod, a middle-aged officer on half-pay, a widower, a BelfastIrishman, and a tavern companion of my maternal grandfather. But theColonel had died within a year, leaving Aunt Bridget with one child ofher own, a girl, as well as a daughter of his wife by the formermarriage. As this happened about the time of my birth, when it becameobvious that my mother was to be an invalid, my father invited AuntBridget to come to his house as housekeeper, and she came, and broughther children with her. 

Her rule from the outset had been as hard as might have been expectedfrom one who prided herself on her self-command--a quality that coveredeverybody, including my mother and me, and was only subject to softeningin favour of her own offspring. 

Aunt Bridget's own daughter, a year older than myself, was a fair childwith light grey eyes, round cheeks of the colour of ripe apples, andlong yellow hair that was carefully combed and curled. Her name wasBetsy, which was extended by her mother to Betsy Beauty. She was usuallydressed in a muslin frock with a sash of light blue ribbon, and beingunderstood to be delicate was constantly indulged and nearly alwayseating, and giving herself generally the airs of the daughter of thehouse. 

Aunt Bridget's step-daughter, ten years older, was a gaunt, ungainlygirl with red hair and irregular features. Her name was Nessy, and, having an instinctive sense of her dependent position, she was veryhumble and subservient and, as Tommy the Mate used to say, "as smooth asan old threepenny bit" to the ruling powers, which always meant my Aunt, but spiteful, insolent, and acrid to anybody who was outside my Aunt'sfavour, which usually meant me. 

Between my cousin and myself there were constant feuds, in which NessyMacLeod never failed to take the side of Betsy Beauty, while my poormother became a target for the shafts of Aunt Bridget, who said I was awilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, and no wonder, seeing howdisgracefully I was indulged, and how shockingly I was being brought up. 

These skirmishes went on for a considerable time without consequences, but they came at last to a foolish climax which led to serious results. 

Even my mother's life had its gleams of sunshine, and flowers were aconstant joy to her. Old Tommy, the gardener, was aware of this, andevery morning sent up a bunch of them, freshly cut and wet with the dew. But one day in the spring he could not do so, being out in the dubs ofthe Curragh, cutting peat for the fires. Therefore I undertook to supplythe deficiency, having already, with the large solemnity of six, begunto consider it my duty to take charge of my mother. 

"Never mind, mammy, I'll setch some slowers sor you, " I said (every _f_being an _s_ in those days), and armed with a pair of scissors I skippeddown to the garden. 

I had chosen a bed of annuals because they were bright and fragrant, andwas beginning to cut some "gilvers" when Nessy MacLeod, who had beenwatching from a window, came bouncing down me. 

"Mary O'Neill, how dare you?" cried Nessy. "You wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, what will your Aunt Bridget say? Don't you knowthis is Betsy Beauty's bed, and nobody else is to touch it?"

I began to excuse myself on the ground of my mother and Tommy the Mate, but Nessy would hear no such explanation. 

"Your mamma has nothing to do with it. You know quite well that yourAunt Bridget manages everything in this house, and nothing can be donewithout her. "

Small as I was that was too much for me. Somewhere in my little heartthere had long been a secret pang of mortified pride--how born I do notknow--at seeing Aunt Bridget take the place of my mother, and now, choking with vexation but without saying a word, I swept off the headsof all the flowers in the bed, and with my arms full of them--ten timesmore than I wanted--I sailed back to my mother's room. 

Inside two minutes there was a fearful tumult. I thought I was doomed topunishment when I heard the big bunch of keys, which Aunt Bridget keptsuspended from her waist, come jingling up the stairs, but it was mypoor mother who paid the penalty. 

"Isabel, " cried Aunt Bridget, "I hope you are satisfied with your childat last. "

"What has Mary been doing now, dear?" said my mother. 

"Don't ask me what she has been doing. You know quite well, or if youdon't you ought to. "

My mother glanced at the flowers and she seemed to understand what hadhappened, for her face fell and she said submissively, "Mary has done wrong, but I am sure she is sorry and will never do itagain. "

"Sorry, indeed!" cried my Aunt. "Not she sorry. And she'll do it againat the very next opportunity. The vixen! The little wilful, underhandvixen! But what wonder if children go wrong when their own mothersneglect to correct them. "

"I daresay you are quite right, dear Bridget--you are always right, "said my mother in a low, grave voice. "But then I'm not very well, andMary is all I have, you know. "

My mother was in tears by this time, but Aunt Bridget was not contentwith her triumph. Sweeping downstairs she carried her complaint to myfather, who ordered that I was to be taken out of my mother's charge onthe ground that she was incapable of attending to my upbringing--a taskwhich, being assigned to my Aunt Bridget, provided that I shouldhenceforward live on the ground floor and eat oaten cake and barleybonnag and sleep alone in the cold room over the hall while Betsy Beautyate wheaten bread and apple tart and slept with her mother in the roomover the kitchen in which they always kept a fire. 

FIFTH CHAPTER

The altered arrangements were a cause of grief to my mother, but I ambound to confess that for me they had certain compensations. One of themwas the greater ease with which I could slip out to Tommy the Mate, whohad been a sailor before he was a gardener, and was still a fine oldsalt, with grizzled beard and shaggy eyebrows, and a merry twinkle inwhat he called his "starboard" eye. 

I think Tommy was one of the few about my father's house who were reallyfond of me, but perhaps that was mainly because he loathed aunt Bridget. He used to call her the Big Woman, meaning that she was the master andmistress of everything and everybody about the place. When he was toldof any special piece of her tyranny to servant or farmhand he used tosay: "Aw, well, she'll die for all"; and when he heard how she hadseparated me from my mother, who had nothing else to love or live for, he spat sideways out of his mouth and said:

"Our Big Woman is a wicked devil, I'm thinking, and I wouldn't trust[shouldn't wonder] but she'll burn in hell. "

What definite idea I attached to this denunciation I do not now recall, but I remember that it impressed me deeply, and that many a nightafterwards, during the miserable half-hours before I fell asleep with myhead under the clothes in the cold bedroom over the hall to which (asNessy MacLeod had told me) the bad fairies came for bad children, Irepeated the strange words again and again. 

Another compensation was the greater opportunity I had for cultivatingan acquaintance which I had recently made with the doctor's son, when hecame with his father on visits to my mother. As soon as the hoofs of thehorse were heard on the gravel, and before the bell could be rung, Iused to dart away on tiptoe, fly through the porch, climb into the gigand help the boy to hold the reins while his father was upstairs. 

This led to what I thought a great discovery. It was about my mother. Ihad always known my mother was sick, but now I got a "skute" (as oldTommy used to say) into the cause of her illness. It was a matter ofmilk. The doctor's boy had heard his father saying so. If my mothercould only have milk morning, noon and night, every day and all day, "there wouldn't be nothing the matter with her. "

This, too, impressed me deeply, and the form it took in my mind was that"mammy wasn't sed enough, " a conclusion that gained colour from the factthat I saw Betsy Beauty perched up in a high chair in the dining-roomtwice or thrice a day, drinking nice warm milk fresh from the cow. Wehad three cows, I remember, and to correct the mischief of my mother'sillness, I determined that henceforth she should not have merely more ofour milk--she should have all of it. 

Losing no time in carrying my intentions into effect, I crept into thedairy as soon as the dairymaid had brought in the afternoon's milking. There it was, still frothing and bubbling in three great bowls, andtaking up the first of them in my little thin arms--goodness knowshow--I made straight for my mother's room. 

But hardly had I climbed half-way up the stairs, puffing and pantingunder my burden, when I met Nessy MacLeod coming down, and she fell onme with her usual reproaches. 

"Mary O'Neill, you wilful, underhand little vixen, whatever are youdoing with the milk?"

Being in no mood for explanations I tried to push past, but Nessyprevented me. 

"No, indeed, you shan't go a step further. What will your Aunt Bridgetsay? Take the milk back, miss, this very minute. "

Nessy's loud protest brought Betsy Beauty out of the dining-room, and ina moment my cousin, looking more than ever like a painted doll in herwhite muslin dress with a large blue bow in her yellow hair, had runupstairs to assist her step-sister. 

I was now between the two, the one above and the other below, and theylaid hold of my bowl to take it from me. They tugged and I resisted andthere was a struggle in which the milk was in danger of being spilled. 

"She's a stubborn little thing and she ought to be whipped, " criedNessy. 

"She's stealing my milk, and I'll tell mamma, " said Betsy. 

"Tell her then, " I cried, and in a burst of anger at finding myselfunable to recover control of my bowl I swept it round and flung itscontents over my cousin's head, thereby drenching her with the frothingmilk and making the staircase to run like a river of whitewash. 

Of course there was a fearful clamour. Betsy Beauty shrieked and Nessybellowed, whereupon Aunt Bridget came racing from her parlour, while mymother, white and trembling, halted to the door of her room. 

"Mally, Mally, what have you done?" cried my mother, but Aunt Bridgetfound no need of questions. After running upstairs to her drippingdaughter, wiping her down with a handkerchief, calling her "my poordarling, " and saying, "Didn't I tell you to have nothing more to do withthat little vixen?" she fell on my mother with bitter upbraidings. 

"Isabel, I hope you see now what your minx of a child is--the littlespiteful fury!"

By this time I had dropped my empty bowl on the stairs and taken refugebehind my mother's gown, but I heard her timid voice trying to excuseme, and saying something about my cousin and a childish quarrel. 

"Childish quarrel, indeed!" cried my Aunt; "there's nothing childishabout that little imp, nothing. And what's more, I shall be obliged toyou, Isabel, if you will never again have the assurance to speak of myBetsy Beauty in the same breath with a child of yours. "

That was more than I could hear. My little heart was afire at thehumiliation put upon my mother. So stepping out to the head of thestairs, I shouted down in my shrillest treble:

"Your Betsy Beauty is a wicked devil, and I wouldn't trust but she'llburn in hell!"

Never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget the effect of thatpronouncement. One moment Aunt Bridget stood speechless in the middle ofthe stairs, as if all breath had been broken out of her. Then, ghastlywhite and without a word, she came flying up at me, and, before I couldrecover my usual refuge, she caught me, slapped me on the cheek andboxed both my ears. 

I do not remember if I cried, but I know my mother did, and that in themidst of the general tumult my father came out of his room and demandedin a loud voice, which seemed to shake the whole house, to be told whatwas going on. 

Aunt Bridget told him, with various embellishments, which my mother didnot attempt to correct, and then, knowing she was in the wrong, shebegan to wipe her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and to say she couldnot live any longer where a child was encouraged to insult her. 

"I have to leave this house--I have to leave it to-morrow, " she said. 

"You don't have to do no such thing, " cried my father. "But I'm justcrazy to see if a man can't be captain in his own claim. These childrenmust go to school. They must all go--the darned lot of 'em. "

SIXTH CHAPTER

Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when Ifirst became known to the doctor's boy. 

It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke inthe dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. Thechurch-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house, under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little whileI made my voice as soft as I could and said:

"Mamma, what is it'?"

"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen, " said my mother. 

I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping over to thewindow I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns, and the frostyair smoking about their red faces. After a while they stopped singing, and then the chain of our front door rattled, and I heard my father'sloud voice asking the singers into the house. 

They came in, and when I was back in bed, I heard them talking and thenlaughing in the room below, with Aunt Bridget louder than all the rest, and when I asked what she was doing my mother told me she was servingout bunloaf and sherry-wine. 

I fell asleep before the incident was over, but as soon as I awoke inthe morning I conceived the idea of singing the Waits myself. Being anartful little thing I knew that my plan would be opposed, so I saidnothing about it, but I got my mother to play and sing the carol I hadheard overnight, until my quick ear had mastered both tune and words, and when darkness fell on Christmas night I proceeded to carry out myintention. 

In the heat of my impatience I forgot to put on cloak or hat, andstealing out of the house I found myself in the carriage drive withnothing on but a pair of thin slippers and the velvet frock that left myneck and arms so bare. It was snowing, and the snow-flakes were whirlinground me and making me dizzy, for in the light from my mother's windowthey seemed to come up from the ground as well as down from the sky. 

When I got out of the light of the window, it was very dark, and I couldonly see that the chestnuts in the drive seemed to have white blanketson them which looked as if they had been hung out to dry. It was a longtime before I got to the gate, and then I had begun to be nervous and tohave half a mind to turn back. But the thought of the bunloaf and thesherry-wine buoyed me up, and presently I found myself on the high road, crossing a bridge and turning down a lane that led to the sea, whosemoaning a mile away was the only sound I could hear. 

I knew quite well where I was going to. I was going to the doctor'shouse. It was called Sunny Lodge, and it was on the edge of Yellow GorseFarm. I had seen it more than once when I had driven out in the carriagewith my mother, and had thought how sweet it looked with its whitewashedwalls and brown thatched roof and the red and white roses which grewover the porch. 

I was fearfully cold before I got there. The snow was in my slippers anddown my neck and among the thickening masses of my hair. At one moment Icame upon some sheep and lambs that were sheltering under a hedge, andthey bleated in the silence of the night. 

But at last I saw the warm red windows of the doctor's cottage, andcoming to the wicket gate, I pushed it open though it was clogged withsnow, and stepped up to the porch. My teeth were now chattering withcold, but as well as I could I began to sing, and in my thin and creachyvoice I had got as far as--

 "_Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem, Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem, Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem, An' in a manger laid_. . . . "

when I heard a rumbling noise inside the house. 

Immediately afterwards the door was opened upon me, and a woman whom Iknew to be the doctor's wife looked down into my face with an expressionof bewilderment, and then cried:

"Goodness gracious me, doctor--if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, Godbless her!"

"Bring her in at once, then, " said the voice of Doctor Conrad fromwithin, and at the next moment I found myself in a sort ofkitchen-parlour which was warm with a glowing turf fire that had akettle singing over it, and cosy and bright with a ragwork hearth-rug, adresser full of blue pottery and a sofa settle covered with red cloth. 

I suppose the sudden change to a warm room must have caused me to faint, for I have no recollection of what happened next, except that I wassitting on somebody's lap and that she was calling me _boght millish_(little sweet) and _veg-veen_ (little dear) while she rubbed myhalf-frozen limbs and did other things that were, I am sure, all womanlyand good. 

When I came to myself Doctor Conrad was saying I would have to sleepthere that night, and he must go over to the Big House and tell mymother what had happened. He went, and by the time he came back, I hadbeen bathed in a dolly-tub placed in front of the fire, and was beingcarried upstairs (in a nightdress many sizes too large for me) to alittle dimity-white bedroom, where the sweet smelling "scraas" under thesloping thatch of the roof came down almost to my face. 

I know nothing of what happened during the night, except that I wasfeeling very hot, and that as often as I opened my eyes the doctor'swife was leaning over me and speaking in a soft voice that seemed faraway. But next day I felt cooler and then Aunt Bridget came in her satinmantle and big black hat, and said something, while standing at the endof my bed, about people paying the penalty when they did things thatwere sly and underhand. 

Towards evening I was much easier, and when the doctor came in to see meat night he said:

"How are we this evening? Ah, better, I see. Distinctly better!"

And then turning to his wife he said:

"No need to stay up with her to-night, Christian Ann. "

"But won't the _boght millish_ be afraid to be left alone?" she asked. 

I said I shouldn't, and she kissed me and told me to knock at the wallif I wanted anything. And then, with her husband's arm about her waist, the good soul left me to myself. 

I don't know how I knew, but I did know that that house was a home oflove. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that that sweet woman, who had been the daughter of a well-to-do man, had chosen the doctor outof all the men in the world when he was only a medical student freshfrom Germany or Switzerland. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that leaving father and mother and a sheltered home she had followed heryoung husband when he first came to Ellan without friends orconnections, and though poor then and poor still, she had neverregretted it. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that all this wasthe opposite of what had happened to my own dear mother, who havingeverything yet had nothing, while this good creature having nothing yethad all. 

SEVENTH CHAPTER

When I awoke next morning the sun was shining, and, after my hair hadbeen brushed smooth over my forehead, I was sitting up in bed, eatingfor breakfast the smallest of bantam eggs with the smallest of silverspoons, when the door opened with a bang and a small figure tumbled intomy room. 

It was a boy, two years older than myself. He wore a grey Norfolk jacketand knickerbockers, but the peculiarity of his dress was a white felthat of enormous size, which, being soiled and turned down in the brim, and having a hole in the crown with a crop of his brown hair stickingthrough it, gave him the appearance of a damaged mushroom. 

Except that on entering he tipped up his head so that I saw his face, which was far from beautiful and yet had two big blue eyes--as blue asthe bluest sea--he took no notice of my presence, but tossed asomersault in the middle of the floor, screwed his legs over the back ofa chair, vaulted over a table and finally stood on his hands with hislegs against the wall opposite to my bed, and his inverted countenanceclose to the carpet. 

In this position, in which he was clearly making a point of remaining aslong as possible, while his face grew very red, we held our firstconversation. I had hitherto sat propped up as quiet as a mouse, but nowI said:

"Little boy, what's your name?"

"Mart, " was the answer. 

"Where do you come from?"

"Spitzbergen. "

I cannot remember that this intelligence astonished me, for when theinverted face had become scarlet, and the legs went down and the headcame up, and my visitor tossed several somersaults over the end of mybed, to the danger of my breakfast tray, and then, without a word more, tumbled out of the room, I was still watching in astonishment. 

I did not know at that time that these were the ways which since thebeginning of the world have always been employed by savages and boyswhen they desire to commend themselves to the female of their kind, sothat when the doctor's wife came smiling upstairs I asked her if thelittle boy who had been to see me was not quite well. 

"Bless you, yes, dear, but that's his way, " she said, and then she toldme all about him. 

His name was Martin Conrad and he was her only child. His hat, which hadawakened my interest, was an old one of his father's, and it was thelast thing he took off when he undressed for bed at night and the firstthing he put on in the morning. When the hole came into its crown hismother had tried to hide it away but he had always found it, and whenshe threw it into the river he had fished it out again. 

He was the strangest boy, full of the funniest fancies. He used to saythat before he was born he lived in a tree and was the fellow who turnedon the rain. It was with difficulty that he could be educated, and everymorning on being awakened, he said he was "sorry he ever started thisgoing to school. " As a consequence he could not read or write as well asother boys of his age, and his grammar was still that of the peasantpeople with whom he loved to associate. 

Chief among these was our gardener, old Tommy the Mate, who lived in amud cabin on the shore and passed the doctor's house on his way to work. Long ago Tommy had told the boy a tremendous story. It was about Arcticexploration and an expedition he had joined in search of Franklin. Thishad made an overpowering impression on Martin, who for mouths afterwardswould stand waiting at the gate until Tommy was going by, and then say:

"Been to the North Pole to-day, Tommy?"

Whereupon Tommy's "starboard eye" would blink and he would answer:

"Not to-day boy. I don't go to the North Pole more nor twice a day now. "

"Don't you, though?" the boy would say, and this would happen everymorning. 

But later on Martin conceived the idea that the North Pole was thelocality immediately surrounding his father's house, and every day hewould set out on voyages of exploration over the garden, the road andthe shore, finding, by his own account, a vast world of mysteriousthings and undiscovered places. By some means--nobody knew how--the boywho could not learn his lessons studied his father's German atlas, andthere was not a name in it north of Spitzbergen which he had not got byheart. He transferred them all to Ellan, so that the Sky Hill becameGreenland, and the Black Head became Franz Josef Land, and the Nun'sWell became Behring Strait, and Martha's Gullet became New Siberia, andSt. Mary's Rock, with the bell anchored on it, became the pivot of theearth itself. 

He could swim like a fish and climb a rock like a lizard, and he kept alog-book, on the back pages of the Doctor's book of visits, which hecalled his "diarrhea. " And now if you lost him you had only to look upto the ridge of the roof, or perhaps on to the chimney stack, which hecalled his crow's nest, and there you found him, spying through hisfather's telescope and crying out:

"Look-out ahead! Ice floes from eighty-six latitude fourteen pointnorth, five knots to the starboard bow. "

His mother laughed until she cried when she told me all this, but thereis no solemnity like that of a child, and to me it was a marvellousstory. I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor's boy, and sawmyself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his side. I suppose mypoor lonely heart was hungering after comradeship, for being asentimental little ninny I decided to offer myself to the doctor's boyas his sister. 

The opportunity was dreadfully long in coming. It did not come until thenext morning, when the door of my room flew open with a yet louder bangthan before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on wheels, supposed to bea sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish terrier, which being red had beencalled William Rufus. His hat was tied over his ears with a tape fromhis mother's apron, and he wore a long pair of his father's knittedstockings which covered his boots and came up to his thighs. 

He did not at first take any more notice of me than on the previous day, but steering his sledge round the room he shouted to his dog that thechair by the side of my bed was a glacier and the sheep-skin rug wasfloating ice. 

After a while we began to talk, and then, thinking my time had come, Itried to approach my subject. Being such a clever little woman I wentartfully to work, speaking first about my father, my mother, my cousin, Nessy MacLeod, and even Aunt Bridget, with the intention of showing howrich I was in relations, so that he might see how poor he was himself. 

I felt myself a bit of a hypocrite in all this, but the doctor's boy didnot know that, and I noticed that as I passed my people in review heonly said "Is she any good?" or "Is he a stunner?"

At length my great moment came and with a fluttering heart I took it. 

"Haven't you got a sister?" I said. 

"Not _me_!" said the doctor's boy, with a dig of emphasis on the lastword which cut me to the quick. 

"Wouldn't you like to have one?"

"Sisters isn't no good, " said the doctor's boy, and he instanced "chaps"at school--Jimmy Christopher and others--whose sisters were afraid ofeverything--lobsters and crabs and even the sea. 

I knew I was as timid as a hare myself, but my lonely little heart wasbeginning to bleed, and as well as I could for my throat which waschoking me, I said:

"I'm not afraid of the sea--not crabs neither. "

In a moment the big mushroom hat was tipped aside and the sea-blue eyeslooked aslant at me. 

"Isn't you, though?"

"No. "

That did it. I could see it did. And when a minute afterwards, I invitedthe doctor's boy into bed, he came in, stockings and all, and sat by myright side, while William Rufus, who had formed an instant attachmentfor me, lay on my left with his muzzle on my lap. 

Later the same day, my bedroom door being open, so that I might calldownstairs to the kitchen, I heard the doctor's boy telling his motherwhat I was. I was a "stunner. "

EIGHTH CHAPTER

From that day forward the doctor's boy considered that I belonged tohim, but not until I was sent to school, with my cousin and herstepsister, did he feel called upon to claim his property. 

It was a mixed day-school in the village, and it was controlled by aBoard which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only teacherwas a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was of thecolour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top of her head. But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual severity, and whenshe spoke through her thin lips she clipped her words with greatrapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which were being chopped ina charity school. 

Afterwards I heard that she owed her position to Aunt Bridget, who hadexercised her influence through the chairman, by means of his accountwith the Big House. Perhaps she thought it her duty to display hergratitude. Certainly she lost no time in showing me that my characterhad gone to school before me, for in order that I might be directlyunder her eye, she placed me in the last seat in the lowest class, although my mother's daily teaching would have entitled me to go higher. 

I dare say I was, as Father Dan used to say, as full of mischief as agoat, and I know I was a chatterbox, but I do not think I deserved thefate that followed. 

One day, not more than a week after we had been sent to school. I heldmy slate in front of my face while I whispered something to the girlbeside and the girl behind me. Both began to titter. 

"Silence!" cried the schoolmistress, who was sitting at her desk, but Iwent on whispering and the girls began to choke with laughter. 

I think the schoolmistress must have thought I was saying somethingabout herself--making game, perhaps, of her personal appearance--forafter a moment she said, in her rapid accents:

"Mary O'Neill, please repeat what you have just been saying. "

I held my slate yet closer to my face and made no answer. 

"Don't you hear, miss? Speak! You've a tongue in your head, haven'tyou?"

But still I did not answer, and then the schoolmistress said:

"Mary O'Neill, come forward. "

She had commanded me like a dog, and like a dog I was about to obey whenI caught sight of Betsy Beauty's face, which, beaming with satisfaction, seemed to be saying: "Now, we shall see. "

I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her desk, came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said:

"You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me? Come out, miss, this very moment. "

I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement. 

"Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered andspoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy _me_?"

That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid as arock. 

Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightlycompressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of myseat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front ofme, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itselfafresh. 

"You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you biggirls come and help me?"

With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing tothe schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod, and together, after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branchfrom a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes. By this time the schoolmistress' hands, and I think her neck werescratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion. 

"Stand there, miss, " she said, "and move from that spot at your peril. "

My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen onthe entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominiousposition. 

"Children, " cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of thescholars, "put down your slates and listen. "

Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing by myside and pointing down to me:

"This child came to school with the character of a wilful, wicked littlevixen, and she has not belied her character. By gross disobedience shehas brought herself to where you see her. 'Spare the rod, spoil thechild, ' is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish parents who ruin theirchildren by overindulgence deserve all that comes to them. But there isno reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child isshe has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by herunlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition. Children, she wassent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stopyour lessons while she is publicly punished. . . . "

With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress steppedback and left me. I knew what she was doing--she was taking her cane outof her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with animpatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as ifI had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress washolding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe andlimber. 

I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me I wasconscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's experience--thepain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation. Ithought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger. Then Ithought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame. I rememberedwhat my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady, and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped beforeall the village children. 

At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here Iwas alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as mylip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would sufferif she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out tothe schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strangething happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph. 

Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy comingout of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was MartinConrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old Tommy thegardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said in her sharpvoice:

"Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place withoutpermission? Go back, sir, this very moment. "

Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he dragged hisbig soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and with both handspulled it down hard on his head. 

"Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step towards himwith the cane poised and switching in the air, as if about to strike. 

The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he droppedhis head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached him, struckher somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and gasping againstthe wall. 

Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that belonged tohim, and before the schoolmistress could recover her breath, or thescholars awake from their astonishment, he marched me, as if his littlestocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in stately silence out of theschool. 

NINTH CHAPTER

I was never sent back to school, and I heard that Martin, by order ofthe butcher, was publicly expelled. This was a cause of distress to ourmothers, who thought the future of our lives had been permanentlydarkened, but I cannot say that it ever stood between us and oursunshine. On the contrary it occurred that--Aunt Bridget having washedher hands of me, and Martin's father being unable to make up his mindwhat to do with him--we found ourselves for some time at large and werenothing loth to take advantage of our liberty, until a day came whichbrought a great disaster. 

One morning I found Martin with old Tommy the Mate in his potting-shed, deep in the discussion of their usual subject--the perils and pains ofArctic exploration, when you have little food in your wallet and not toomuch in your stomach. 

"But you has lots of things when you gets there--hams and flitches andoranges and things--hasn't you?" said Martin. 

"Never a ha'p'orth, " said Tommy. "Nothing but glory. You just takes yourAlping stock and your sleeping sack and your bit o' biscuit and away yougo over crevaxes deeper nor Martha's gullet and mountains higher norMount Blank and never think o' nothing but doing something that nobody'snever done before. My goodness, yes, boy, that's the way of it whenyou're out asploring. 'Glory's waiting for me' says you, and on you go. "

At that great word I saw Martin's blue eyes glisten like the sea whenthe sun is shining on it; and then, seeing me for the first time, heturned back to old Tommy and said:

"I s'pose you lets women go with you when you're out asploring--womenand girls?"

"Never a woman, " said Tommy. 

"Not never--not if they're stunners?" said Martin. 

"Well, " says Tommy, glancing down at me, while his starboard eyetwinkled, "I won't say never--not if they're stunners. "

Next day Martin, attended by William Rufus, arrived at our house with abig corn sack on his shoulder, a long broom-handle in his hand, alemonade bottle half filled with milk, a large sea biscuit and a smallUnion Jack which came from the confectioner's on the occasion of hislast birthday. 

"Glory's waiting for me--come along, shipmate, " he said in a mysteriouswhisper, and without a word of inquiry, I obeyed. 

He gave me the biscuit and I put it in the pocket of my frock, and thebottle of milk, and I tied it to my belt, and then off we went, with thedog bounding before us. 

I knew he was going to the sea, and my heart was in my mouth, for of allthe things I was afraid of I feared the sea most--a terror born with me, perhaps, on the fearful night of my birth. But I had to live up to thecharacter I had given myself when Martin became my brother, and the onedread of my life was that, finding me as timid as other girls, he mightwant me no more. 

We reached the sea by a little bay, called Murphy's Mouth, which had amud cabin that stood back to the cliff and a small boat that was mooredto a post on the shore. Both belonged to Tommy the Mate, who was a"widow man" living alone, and therefore there were none to see us whenwe launched the boat and set out on our voyage. It was then two o'clockin the afternoon, the sun was shining, and the tide, which was at theturn, was beginning to flow. 

I had never been in a boat before, but I dared not say anything aboutthat, and after Martin had fixed the bow oar for me and taken the strokehimself, I spluttered and plunged and made many blunders. I had neverbeen on the sea either, and almost as soon as we shot clear of the shoreand were lifted on to the big waves, I began to feel dizzy, and droppedmy oar, with the result that it slipped through the rollocks and waswashed away. Martin saw what had happened as we swung round to hisrowing, but when I expected him to scold me, he only said:

"Never mind, shipmate! I was just thinking we would do better with one, "and, shipping his own oar in the stern of the boat, he began to scull. 

My throat was hurting me, and partly from shame and partly from fear, Inow sat forward, with William Rufus on my lap, and said as little aspossible. But Martin was in high spirits, and while his stout littlebody rolled to the rocking of the boat he whistled and sang and shoutedmessages to me over his shoulder. 

"My gracious! Isn't this what you call ripping?" he cried, and though myteeth were chattering, I answered that it was. 

"Some girls--Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and BetsyBeauty--would be frightened to come asploring, wouldn't they?"

"Wouldn't they?" I said, and I laughed, though I was trembling down tothe soles of my shoes. 

We must have been half an hour out, and the shore seemed so far awaythat Murphy's Mouth and Tommy's cabin and even the trees of the BigHouse looked like something I had seen through the wrong end of atelescope, when he turned his head, with a wild light in his eyes, andsaid:

"See the North Pole out yonder?"

"Don't I?" I answered, though I was such a practical little person, andhad not an ounce of "dream" in me. 

I knew quite well where he was going to. He was going to St. Mary'sRock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place I was mostafraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black mass, standingtwenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like a coffin in a pall, with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save at high water, by amultitude of hungry sea-fowl. 

A white cloud of the birds rose from their sleep as we approached, andwheeled and whistled and screamed and beat their wings over our heads. Iwanted to scream too, but Martin said:

"My gracious, isn't this splendiferous?"

"Isn't it?" I answered, and, little hypocrite that I was, I began tosing. 

I remember that I sang one of Tommy's sailor-songs, "Sally, " because itsjolly doggerel was set to such a jaunty tune--

 "_Oh Sally's the gel for me, Our Sally's the gel for me, I'll marry the gel that I love best When I come back from sea_. "

My pretence of happiness was shortlived, for at the next moment I madeanother mistake. Drawing up his boat to a ledge of the rock, and layinghold of our painter, Martin leapt ashore, and then held out his hand tome to follow him, but in fear of a big wave I held back when I ought tohave jumped, and he was drenched from head to foot. I was ashamed, andthought he would have scolded me, but he only shook himself and said:

"That's nothing! We don't mind a bit of wet when we're out asploring. "

My throat was hurting me again and I could not speak, but withoutwaiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right arm, and toldme to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat, while he climbed therock and took possession of it in the name of the king. 

"Do or die we allus does that when we're out asploring, " he said, andwith his sack over his shoulder, his broom-handle in his hand and hislittle Union Jack sticking out of the hole in the crown of his hat, heclambered up the crag and disappeared over the top of it. 

Being left alone, for the dog had followed him, my nervousness increasedtenfold, and thinking at last that the rising tide was about to submergethe ledge on which I stood, I tried in my fright to climb the cliff. Buthardly had I taken three steps when my foot slipped and I clutched theseaweed to save myself from falling, with the result that the boat'srope slid from my arm, and went rip-rip-ripping down the rock until itfell with a splash into the sea. 

I saw what I had done, and I screamed, and then Martin's head appearedafter a moment on the ledge above me. But it was too late for him to doanything, for the boat had already drifted six yards away, and just whenI thought he would have shrieked at me for cutting off our onlyconnection with the shore, he said:

"Never mind, shipmate! We allus expecs to lose a boat or two when we'reout asploring. "

I was silent from shame, but Martin, having hauled me up the rock byhelp of the broom handle, rattled away as if nothing hadhappened--pointing proudly to a rust-eaten triangle with a bellsuspended inside of it and his little flag floating on top. 

"But, oh dear, what are we to do now?" I whimpered. 

"Don't you worrit about that, " he said. "We'll just signal back to thenext base--we call them bases when we're out asploring. "

I understood from this that he was going to ring the bell which, beingheard on the land, would bring somebody to our relief. But the bell wasbig, only meant to be put in motion on stormy nights by the shock andsurging of an angry sea, and when Martin had tied a string to its tongueit was a feeble sound he struck from it. 

Half an hour passed, an hour, two hours, and still I saw nothing on thewater but our own empty boat rocking its way back to the shore. 

"Will they ever come?" I faltered. 

"Ra--ther! Just you wait and you'll see them coming. And when they takeus ashore there'll be crowds and crowds with bugles and bands and thingsto take us home. My goodness, yes, " he said, with the same wild look, "hundreds and tons of them!"

But the sun set over the sea behind us, the land in front grew dim, themoaning tide rose around the quaking rock and even the screamingsea-fowl deserted us, and still there was no sign of relief. My heartwas quivering through my clothes by this time, but Martin, who hadwhistled and sung, began to talk about being hungry. 

"My goodness yes, I'm that hungry I could eat. . . . I could eat adog--we allus eats our dogs when we're out asploring. "

This reminded me of the biscuit, but putting my hand to the pocket of myfrock I found to my dismay that it was gone, having fallen out, perhaps, when I slipped in my climbing. My lip fell and I looked up at him witheyes of fear, but he only said:

"No matter! We never minds a bit of hungry when we're out asploring. "

I did not know then, what now I know, that my little boy who could notlearn his lessons and had always been in disgrace, was a born gentleman, but my throat was thick and my eyes were swimming and to hide my emotionI pretended to be ill. 

"I know, " said Martin. "Dizzingtory! [dysentery]. We allus hasdizzingtory when we're out asploring. "

There was one infallible cure for that, though--milk!

"I allus drinks a drink of milk, and away goes the dizzingtory in ajiffy. "

This recalled the bottle, but when I twisted it round on my belt, hopingto make amends for the lost biscuit, I found to my confusion that it hadsuffered from the same misadventure, being cracked in the bottom, andevery drop of the contents gone. 

That was the last straw, and the tears leapt to my eyes, but Martin wenton whistling and singing and ringing the big bell as if nothing hadhappened. 

The darkness deepened, the breath of night came sweeping over the sea, the boom of the billows on the rock became still more terrible, and Ibegan to shiver. 

"The sack!" cried Martin. "We allus sleeps in sacks when we're outasploring. "

I let him do what he liked with me now, but when he had packed me up inthe sack, and put me to lie at the foot of the triangle, telling me Iwas as right as ninepence, I began to think of something I had read in astorybook, and half choking with sobs I said:

"Martin!"

"What now, shipmate?"

"It's all my fault . . . And I'm just as frightened as JimmyChristopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty . . . And I'mnot a stunner . . . And you'll have to give me up . . . And leave mehere and save yourself and . . . "

But Martin stopped me with a shout and a crack of laughter. 

"Not _me_! Not much! We never leaves a pal when we're out asploring. Long as we lives we never does it. Not never!"

That finished me. I blubbered like a baby, and William Rufus, who wassitting by my side, lifted his nose and joined in my howling. 

What happened next I never rightly knew. I was only aware, though myback was to him, that Martin, impatient of his string, had leapt up tothe bell and was swinging his little body from the tongue to make alouder clamour. One loud clang I heard, and then came a crash and acrack, and then silence. 

"What is it?" I cried, but at first there was no answer. 

"Have you hurt yourself?"

And then through the thunderous boom of the rising sea on the rock, came the breaking voice of my boy (he had broken his right arm) mingledwith the sobs which his unconquered and unconquerable little soul wasstruggling to suppress--

"We never minds a bit of hurt . . . We never minds _nothing_ when we'reout asploring!"

Meantime on shore there was a great commotion. My father was railing atAunt Bridget, who was upbraiding my mother, who was crying for FatherDan, who was flying off for Doctor Conrad, who was putting his horseinto his gig and scouring the parish in search of the two lost children. 

But Tommy the Mate, who remembered the conversation in the potting-shedand thought he heard the tinkle of a bell at sea, hurried off to theshore, where he found his boat bobbing on the beach, and thereby came tohis own conclusions. 

By the light of a lantern he pulled out to St. Mary's Rock, and there, guided by the howling of the dog, he came upon the great littleexplorers, hardly more than three feet above high water, lying togetherin the corn sack, locked in each other's arms and fast asleep. 

There were no crowds and bands of music waiting for us when Tommybrought us ashore, and after leaving Martin with his broken limb in hismother's arms at the gate of Sunny Lodge, he took me over to thePresbytery in order that Father Dan might carry me home and so standbetween me and my father's wrath and Aunt Bridget's birch. 

Unhappily there was no need for this precaution. The Big House, when wereached it, was in great confusion. My mother had broken a blood vessel. 

TENTH CHAPTER

During the fortnight in which my mother was confined to bed I was herconstant companion and attendant. With the mighty eagerness of a childwho knew nothing of what the solemn time foreboded I flew about thehouse on tiptoe, fetching my mother's medicine and her milk and the iceto cool it, and always praising myself for my industry and thinking Iwas quite indispensable. 

"You couldn't do without your little Mally, could you, mammy?" I wouldsay, and my mother would smooth my hair lovingly with her thin whitehand and answer:

"No, indeed, I couldn't do without my little Mally. " And then my littlebird-like beak would rise proudly in the air. 

All this time I saw nothing of Martin, and only heard through DoctorConrad in his conversations with my mother, that the boy's broken armhad been set, and that as soon as it was better, he was to be sent toKing George's College, which was at the other end of Ellan. What was tobe done with myself I never inquired, being so satisfied that my mothercould not get on without me. 

I was partly aware that big letters, bearing foreign postage-stamps andseals and coats of arms, with pictures of crosses and hearts, werecoming to our house. I was also aware that at intervals, while my motherwas in bed, there was the sound of voices, as if in eager and sometimesheated conference, in the room below, and that my mother would raise herpale face from her pillow and stop my chattering with "Hush!" when myfather's voice was louder and sterner than usual. But it never occurredto me to connect these incidents with myself, until the afternoon of theday on which my mother got up for the first time. 

She was sitting before the fire, for autumn was stealing on, and I wasbustling about her, fixing the rug about her knees and telling her ifshe wanted anything she was to be sure and call her little Mally, when atimid knock came to the door and Father Dan entered the room. I can seehis fair head and short figure still, and hear his soft Irish voice, ashe stepped forward and said:

"Now don't worry, my daughter. Above all, don't worry. "

By long experience my mother knew this for a sign of the dear Father'sown perturbation, and I saw her lower lip tremble as she asked:

"Hadn't Mary better run down to the garden?"

"No! Oh no!" said Father Dan. "It is about Mary I come to speak, so ourlittle pet may as well remain. "

Then at a signal from my mother I went over to her and stood by herside, and she embraced my waist with a trembling arm, while the Fathertook a seat by her side, and, fumbling the little silver cross on hischain, delivered his message. 

After long and anxious thought--and he might say prayer--it had beendecided that I should be sent away to a Convent. It was to be a Conventof the Sacred Heart in Rome. He was to take me to Rome himself and seeme safely settled there. And they (meaning my father and Aunt Bridget)had promised him--faithfully promised him--that when the holidays cameround he should be sent to bring me home again. So there was nothing tofear, nothing to worry about, nothing to . . . To . . . 

My mother listened as long as she could, and then--her beautiful whiteface distorted by pain--she broke in on the Father's message with a cryof protest. 

"But she is so young! Such a child! Only seven years old! How can anyone think of sending such a little one away from home?"

Father Dan tried to pacify her. It was true I was very young, but thenthe Reverend Mother was such a good woman. She would love me and carefor me as if I were her own child. And then the good nuns, God blesstheir holy souls. . . . 

"But Mary is all I have, " cried my mother, "and if they take her awayfrom me I shall be broken-hearted. At such a time too! How cruel theyare! They know quite well what the doctor says. Can't they wait a littlelonger?"

I could see that Father Dan was arguing against himself, for his eyesfilled as he said:

"It's hard, I know it's hard for you, my daughter. But perhaps it's bestfor the child that she should go away from home--perhaps it's all God'sblessed and holy will. Remember there's a certain person here who isn'tkind to our little innocent, and is making her a cause of trouble. Notthat I think she is actuated by evil intentions. . . . "

"But she is, she is, " cried my mother, who was growing more and moreexcited. 

"Then all the more reason why Mary should go to the convent--for a timeat all events. "

My mother began to waver, and she said:

"Let her be sent to a Convent in the island then. "

"I thought of that, but there isn't one, " said Father Dan. 

"Then . . . Then . . . Then take her to the Presbytery, " said my mother. "Dear, dear Father, " she pleaded, "let her live with you, and havesomebody to teach her, and then she can come to see me every day, ortwice a week, or even once a week--I am not unreasonable. "

"It would be beautiful, " said Father Dan, reaching over to touch my arm. "To have our little Mary in my dull old house would be like having thesun there always. But there are reasons why a young girl should not bebrought up in the home of a priest, so it is better that our littleprecious should go to Rome. "

My mother was breaking down and Father Dan followed up his advantage. 

"Then wisha, my daughter, think what a good thing it will be for thechild. She will be one of the children of the Infant Jesus first, then achild of Mary, and then of the Sacred heart itself. And then remember, Rome! The holy city! The city of the Holy Father! Why, who knows, shemay even see himself some day!"

"Yes, yes, I know, " said my mother, and then turning with her meltingeyes to me she said:

"Would my Mary like to go--leaving her mamma but coming home in theholidays--would she?"

I was going to say I would not, because mamma could not possibly get onwithout me, but before I could reply Aunt Bridget, with her bunch ofkeys at her waist, came jingling into the room, and catching my mother'slast words, said, in her harsh, high-pitched voice. 

"Isabel! You astonish me! To defer to the will of a child! Such a childtoo! So stubborn and spoiled and self-willed! If _we_ say it is good forher to go she _must_ go!"

I could feel through my mother's arm, which was still about my waist, that she was trembling from head to foot, but at first she did not speakand Aunt Bridget, in her peremptory way, went on:

"We say it is good for you, too, Isabel, if she is not to hasten yourdeath by preying on your nerves and causing you to break more bloodvessels. So we are consulting your welfare as well as the girl's insending her away. "

My mother's timid soul could bear no more. I think it must have been theonly moment of anger her gentle spirit ever knew, but, gathering all herstrength, she turned upon Aunt Bridget in ungovernable excitement. 

"Bridget, " she said, "you are doing nothing of the kind. You know youare not. You are only trying to separate me from my child and my childfrom me. When you came to my house I thought you would be kinder to mychild than a anybody else, but you have not been, you have been cruel toher, and shut your heart against her, and while I have been helplesshere, and in bed, you have never shown her one moment of love andkindness. No, you have no feeling except for your own, and it neveroccurs to you that having brought your own child into my house you aretrying to turn my child out of it. "

"So that's how you look at it, is it?" said Aunt Bridget, with a flashof her cold grey eyes. "I thought I came to this house--your house asyou call it--only out of the best intentions, just to spare you troublewhen you were ill and unable, to attend to your duties as a wife. Butbecause I correct your child when she is wilful and sly andwicked. . . . "

"Correct your own child, Bridget O'Neill!" cried my mother, "and leavemine to me. She's all I have and it isn't long I shall have her. Youknow quite well how much she has cost me, and that I haven't had a veryhappy married life, but instead of helping me with her father. . . . "

"Say no more, " said Aunt Bridget, "we don't want you to hurt yourselfagain, and to allow this ill-conditioned child to be the cause ofanother hemorrhage. "

"Bridget O'Neill, " cried my mother, rising up from her chair, "you are ahard-hearted woman with a bad disposition. You know as well as I do thatit wasn't Mary who made me ill, but you--you, who reproached me andtaunted me about my child until my heart itself had to bleed. For sevenyears you have been doing that, and now you are disposing of my darlingover my head without consulting me. Has a mother no rights in her ownchild--the child she has suffered for, and loved and lived for--thatother people who care nothing for it should take it away from her andsend it into a foreign country where she may never see it again? But youshall not do that! No, you shall not'! As long as there's breath in mybody you shall not do it, and if you attempt. . . . "

In her wild excitement my mother had lifted one of her trembling handsinto Aunt Bridget's face while the other was still clasped about me, when suddenly, with a look of fear on her face, she stopped speaking. She had heard a heavy step on the stairs. It was my father. He enteredthe room with his knotty forehead more compressed than usual and said:

"What's this she shall not do?"

My mother dropped back into her seat in silence, and Aunt Bridget, wiping' her eyes on her black apron--she only wept when my father waspresent--proceeded to explain. 

It seems I am a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition and though, I've been up early and late and made myself a servant for seven yearsI'm only in this house to turn my sister's child out of it. It seemstoo, that we have no business--none of us have--to say what ought to bedone for this girl--her mother being the only person who has any rightsin the child, and if we attempt . . . "

"What's that?"

In his anger and impatience my father could listen no longer and in hisloud voice he said:

"Since when has a father lost control of his own daughter? He has toprovide for her, hasn't he? If she wants anything it's to him she has tolook for it, isn't it? That's the law I guess, eh? Always has been, allthe world over. Then what's all this hustling about?"

My mother made a feeble effort to answer him. 

"I was only saying, Daniel . . . "

"You were saying something foolish and stupid. I reckon a man can dowhat he likes with his own, can't he? If this girl is my child and I sayshe is to go somewhere, she is to go. " And saying this my father broughtdown his thick hand with a thump on to a table. 

It was the first time he had laid claim to me, and perhaps that acted onmy mother, as she said, submissively:

"Very well, dear. _You_ know best what is best for Mary, and if yousay--you and Bridget and . . . And Father Dan. . . . "

"I do say, and that's enough. So just go to work and fix up this Conventscheme without future notice. And hark here, let me see for the futureif a man can't have peace from these two-cent trifles for his importantbusiness. "

My mother was crushed. Her lips moved again, but she said nothing aloud, and my father turned on his heel, and left the room, shaking the floorat every step under the weight of his sixteen stone. At the next moment, Aunt Bridget, jingling her keys, went tripping after him. 

Hardly had they gone when my mother broke into a long fit of coughing, and when it was over she lay back exhausted, with her white face and hertired eyes turned upwards. Then I clasped her about the neck, and FatherDan, whose cheeks were wet with tears patted her drooping hand. 

My darling mother! Never once have I thought of her without the greatestaffection, but now that I know for myself what she must have suffered Ilove best to think of her as she was that day--my sweet, beautiful, timid angel--standing up for one brief moment, not only against AuntBridget, but against the cruelty of all the ages, in the divine right ofher outraged motherhood. 

ELEVENTH CHAPTER

My mother's submission was complete. Within twenty-four hours she wasbusy preparing clothes for my journey to Rome. The old coloured patternbook was brought out again, material was sent for, a sewing-maid wasengaged from the village, and above all, in my view, an order wasdispatched to Blackwater for a small squirrel-skin scarf, a largesquirrel-skin muff, and a close-fitting squirrel-skin hat with a featheron the side of it. 

A child's heart is a running brook, and it would wrong the truth to saythat I grieved much in the midst of these busy preparations. On thecontrary I felt a sort of pride in them, poor innocent that I was, as insomething that gave me a certain high superiority over Betsy Beauty andNessy MacLeod, and entitled me to treat them with condescension. 

Father Dan, who came more frequently than ever, fostered this feelingwithout intending to do so, by telling me, whenever we were alone, thatI must be a good girl to everybody now, and especially to my mother. 

"My little woman would be sorry to worry mamma, wouldn't she?" he wouldwhisper, and when I answered that I would be sorrier than sorry, hewould say:

"Wisha then, she must be brave. She must keep up. She must not grieveabout going away or cry when the time comes for parting. "

I said "yes" and "yes" to all this, feeling very confidential andcourageous, but I dare say the good Father gave the same counsel to mymother also, for she and I had many games of make-believe, I remember, in which we laughed and chattered and sang, though I do not think I eversuspected that the part we played was easier to me than to her. 

It dawned on me at last, though, when in the middle of the night, nearto the time of my going away, I was awakened by a bad fit of my mother'scoughing, and heard her say to herself in the deep breathing thatfollowed:

"My poor child! What is to become of her?"

Nevertheless all went well down to the day of my departure. It had beenarranged that I was to sail to Liverpool by the first of the two dailysteamers, and without any awakening I leapt out of bed at the firstsign of daylight. So great was my delight that I began to dance in mynightdress to an invisible skipping rope, forgetting my father, whoalways rose at dawn and was at breakfast in the room below. 

My mother and I breakfasted in bed, and then there was great commotion. It chiefly consisted for me in putting on my new clothes, including myfurs, and then turning round and round on tiptoe and smiling at myselfin a mirror. I was doing this while my mother was telling me to write toher as often as I was allowed, and while she knelt at her prayer stool, which she used as a desk, to make a copy of the address for my letters. 

Then I noticed that the first line of her superscription "Mrs. DanielO'Neill" was blurred by the tears that were dropping from her eyes, andmy throat began to hurt me dreadfully. But I remembered what Father Danhad told me to do, so I said:

"Never mind, mammy. Don't worry--I'll be home for the holidays. "

Soon afterwards we heard the carriage wheels passing under the window, and then Father Dan came up in a white knitted muffler, and with a funnybag which he used for his surplice at funerals, and said, through alittle cloud of white breath, that everything was ready. 

I saw that my mother was turning round and taking out herpocket-handkerchief, and I was snuffling a little myself, but at a signfrom Father Dan, who was standing at the threshold. I squeezed back thewater in my eyes and cried:

"Good-bye mammy. I'll be back for Christmas, " and then darted across tothe door. 

I was just passing through it when I heard my mother say "Mary" in astrange low voice, and I turned and saw her--I can see her still--withher beautiful pale face all broken up, and her arms held out to me. 

Then I rushed back to her, and she clasped me to her breast crying, "Mally veen! My Mally veen!" and I could feel her heart beating throughher dress and hear the husky rattle in her throat, and then all our poorlittle game of make-believe broke down utterly. 

At the next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should be latefor the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then mine, and letme go. 

Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeingNessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered mycomposure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in statelysilence with my little bird-like head in the air. 

I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing with ashawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched me and said:

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye, then?"

"No, " I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost height. 

"And why not?"

"Because you've been unkind to mamma and cruel to me, and because youthink there's nobody but Betsy Beauty. And I'll tell them at the Conventthat you are making mamma ill, and you're as bad as . . . As bad as thebad women in the Bible!"

"My gracious!" said Aunt Bridget, and she tried to laugh, but I couldsee that her face became as white as a whitewashed wall. This did nottrouble me in the least until I reached the carriage, when Father Dan, who was sitting inside, said:

"My little Mary won't leave home like that--without kissing her aunt andsaying good-bye to her cousins. "

So I returned and shook hands with Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty, andlifted my little face to my Aunt Bridget. 

"That's better, " she said, after she had kissed me, but when I hadpassed her my quick little ear caught the words:

"Good thing she's going, though. "

During this time my father, with the morning mist playing likehoar-frost about his iron-grey hair, had been tramping the gravel andsaying the horses were getting cold, so without more ado he bundled meinto the carriage and banged the door on me. 

But hardly had we started when Father Dan, who was blinking his littleeyes and pretending to blow his nose on his coloured print handkerchief, said, "Look!" and pointed up to my mother's room. 

There she was again, waving and kissing her hand to me through her openwindow, and she continued to do so until we swirled round some trees andI lost the sight of her. 

What happened in my mother's room when her window was closed I do notknow, but I well remember that, creeping into a corner of the carriage. I forgot all about the glory and grandeur of going away, and that itdid not help me to remember when half way down the drive a boy with adog darted from under the chestnuts and raced alongside of us. 

It was Martin, and though his right arm was in a sling, he leapt up tothe step and held on to the open window by his left hand while he pushedhis head into the carriage and made signs to me to take out of his moutha big red apple which he held in his teeth by the stalk. I took it, andthen he dropped to the ground, without uttering a word, and I couldlaugh now to think of the gruesome expression of his face with itslagging lower lip and bloodshot eyes. I had no temptation to do so then, however, and least of all when I looked back and saw his littleone-armed figure in the big mushroom hat, standing on the top of thehigh wall of the bridge, with William Rufus beside him. 

We reached Blackwater in good tithe for the boat, and when the funnelshad ceased trumpeting and we were well away, I saw that we were sittingin one of two private cabins on the upper deck; and then Father Dan toldme that the other was occupied by the young Lord Raa, and his guardian, and that they were going up together for the first time to Oxford. 

I am sure this did not interest me in the least at that moment, so falseis it that fate forewarns us when momentous events are about to occur. And now that I had time to think, a dreadful truth was beginning to dawnon me, so that when Father Dan, who was much excited, went off to payhis respects to the great people, I crudled up in the corner of thecabin that was nearest to the door and told myself that after all I hadbeen turned out of my father's house, and would never see my mother andMartin any more. 

I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to the stern, making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of my home fadedaway in the sunlight, which was now tipping the hilltops with a featherycrest, when my cabin was darkened by somebody who stood in the doorway. 

It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he was. Hewas the young Lord Raa. And at first I thought how handsome and welldressed he was as he looked down at me and smiled. After a moment hestepped into the cabin and sat in front of me and said:

"So you are little Mary O'Neill, are you?"

I did not speak. I was thinking he was not so very handsome after all, having two big front teeth like Betsy Beauty. 

"The girl who ought to have been a boy and put my nose out, eh?"

Still I did not speak. I was thinking his voice was like NessyMacLeod's--shrill and harsh and grating. 

"Poor little mite! Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn't she?"

Even yet I did not speak. I was thinking his eyes were like AuntBridget's--cold and grey and piercing. 

"So silent and demure, though! Quite a little nun already. A deucedpretty one, too, if anybody asks me. "

I was beginning to have a great contempt for him. 

"Where did you get those big angel eyes from? Stole them from somepicture of the Madonna, I'll swear. "

By this time I had concluded that he was not worth speaking to, so Iturned my head and I was looking back at the sea, when I heard him say:

"I suppose you are going to give me a kiss, you nice little woman, aren't you?"

"No. "

"Oh, but you must--we are relations, you know. "

"I won't. "

He laughed at that, and rising from his seat, he reached over to kissme, whereupon I drew one of my hands out of my muff and doubling mylittle mittened fist, I struck him in the face. 

Being, as I afterwards learned, a young autocrat, much indulged byservants and generally tyrannising over them, he was surprised andangry. 

"The spitfire!" he said. "Who would have believed it? The face of a nunand the temper of a devil! But you'll have to make amends for this, mylady. "

With that he went away and I saw no more of him until the steamer wasdrawing up at the landing stage at Liverpool, and then, while thepassengers were gathering up their luggage, he came back with FatherDan, and the tall sallow man who was his guardian, and said:

"Going to give me that kiss to make amends, or are you to owe me agrudge for the rest of your life, my lady?"

"My little Mary couldn't owe a grudge to anybody, " said Father Dan. "She'll kiss his lordship and make amends; I'm certain. "

And then I did to the young Lord Raa what I had done to Aunt Bridget--Iheld up my face and he kissed me. 

It was a little, simple, trivial incident, but it led with other thingsto the most lamentable fact of my life, and when I think of it Isometimes wonder how it comes to pass that He who numbers the flowers ofthe field and counts the sparrows as they fall has no handwriting withwhich to warn His children that their footsteps may not fail. 

TWELFTH CHAPTER

Of our journey to Rome nothing remains to me but the memory of sleepingin different beds in different towns, of trains screaming throughtunnels and slowing down in glass-roofed railway stations, of endlesscrowds of people moving here and there in a sort of maze, nothing butthis, and the sense of being very little and very helpless and of havingto be careful not to lose sight of Father Dan, for fear of beinglost--until the afternoon of the fourth day after we left home. 

We were then crossing a wide rolling plain that was almost destitute oftrees, and looked, from the moving train, like green billows of the seawith grass growing over them. Father Dan was reading his breviary forthe following day, not knowing what he would have to do in it, when thesun set in a great blaze of red beyond the horizon, and then suddenly abig round black ball, like a captive balloon, seemed to rise in themidst of the glory. 

I called Father Dan's attention to this, and in a moment he wasfearfully excited. 

"Don't worry, my child, " he cried, while tears of joy sprang to hiseyes. "Do you know what that is? That's the dome of St. Peter's! Rome, my child, Rome!"

It was nine o'clock when we arrived at our destination, and in the midstof a great confusion I walked by Father Dan's side and held on to hisvertical pocket, while he carried his own bag, and a basket of mine, down the crowded platform to an open cab outside the station. 

Then Father Dan wiped his forehead with his print handkerchief and I satclose up to him, and the driver cracked his long whip and shouted at thepedestrians while we rattled on and on over stony streets, which seemedto be full of statues and fountains that were lit up by a great whitelight that was not moonlight and yet looked like it. 

But at last we stopped at a little door of a big house which seemed tostand, with a church beside it, on a high shelf overlooking the city, for I could see many domes like that of St. Peter lying below us. 

A grill in the little door was first opened and then a lady in a blackhabit, with a black band round her forehead and white bands down eachside of her face, opened the door itself, and asked us to step in, andwhen we had done so, she took us down a long passage into a warm room, where another lady, dressed in the same way, only a little grander, satin a big red arm-chair. 

Father Dan, who was still wearing his knitted muffler, bowed very low tothis lady, calling her the Reverend Mother Magdalene, and she answeredhim in English but with a funny sound which I afterwards knew to be aforeign accent. 

I remember that I thought she was very beautiful, nearly as beautiful asmy mother, and when Father Dan told me to kiss her hand I did so, andthen she put me to sit in a chair and looked at me. 

"What is her age?" she asked, whereupon Father Dan said he thought Iwould be eight that month, which was right, being October. 

"Small, isn't she?" said the lady, and then Father Dan said somethingabout poor mamma which I cannot remember. 

After that they talked about other things, and I looked at the pictureson the walls--pictures of Saints and Popes and, above all, a picture ofJesus with His heart open in His bosom. 

"The child will be hungry, " said the lady. "She must have something toeat before she goes to bed--the other children have gone already. "

Then she rang a hand-bell, and when the first lady came back she said:

"Ask Sister Angela to come to me immediately. "

A few minutes later Sister Angela came into the room, and she was quiteyoung, almost a girl, with such a sweet sad face that I loved herinstantly. 

"This is little Mary O'Neill. Take her to the Refectory and give herwhatever she wants, and don't leave her until she is quiet andcomfortable. "

"Very well, Mother, " said Sister Angela, and taking my hand shewhispered: "Come, Mary, you look tired. "

I rose to go with her, but at the same moment Father Dan rose too, and Iheard him say he must lose no time in finding an hotel, for his Bishophad given him only one day to remain in Rome, and he had to catch anearly train home the following morning. 

This fell on me like a thunderbolt. I hardly know what I had led myselfto expect, but certainly the idea of being left alone in Rome had neveronce occurred to me. 

My little heart was fluttering, and dropping the Sister's hand I steppedback and took Father Dan's and said:

"You are not going to leave your little Mary are you, Father?"

It was harder for the dear Father than for me, for I remember that, fearfully flurried, he stammered in a thick voice something about theReverend Mother taking good care of me, and how he was sure to come backat Christmas, according to my father's faithful promise, to take me homefor the holidays. 

After that Sister Angela led me, sniffing a little still, to theRefectory, which was a large, echoing room, with rows of plain dealtables and forms, ranged in front of a reading desk that had another andmuch larger picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall above it. Only onegasjet was burning, and I sat under it to eat my supper, and after I hadtaken a basin of soup I felt more comforted. 

Then Sister Angela lit a lamp and taking my hand she led me up a stonestaircase to the Dormitory, which was a similar room, but not so silent, because it was full of beds, and the breathing of the girls, who wereall asleep, made it sound like the watchmaker's shop in our village, only more church-like and solemn. 

My bed was near to the door, and after Sister Angela had helped me toundress, and tucked me in, she made her voice very low, and said I wouldbe quite comfortable now, and she was sure I was going to be a goodlittle girl and a dear child of the Infant Jesus; and then I could nothelp taking my arms out again and clasping her round the neck anddrawing her head down and kissing her. 

After that she took the lamp and went away to a cubicle which waspartitioned off the end of the Dormitory and there I could see herprepare to go to bed herself--taking the white bands off her cheeks andthe black band off her forehead, and letting her long light hair fallin beautiful wavy masses about her face, which made her look so sweetand home like. 

But oh, I was so lonely! Never in my life since--no, not even when I wasin my lowest depths--have I felt so little and helpless and alone. Afterthe Sister had gone to bed and everything was quiet in the Dormitorysave for the breathing of the girls--all strangers to me and I tothem--from mere loneliness I covered up my head in the clothes just as Iused to do when I was a little thing and my father came into my mother'sroom. 

I try not to think bitterly of my father, but even yet I am at a loss toknow how he could have cast me away so lightly. Was it merely that hewanted peace for his business and saw no chance of securing it in hisown home except by removing the chief cause of Aunt Bridget's jealousy?Or was it that his old grudge against Fate for making me a girl made himwish to rid himself of the sight of me?

I do not know. I cannot say. But in either case I try in vain to see howhe could have thought he had a right, caring nothing for me, to tear mefrom the mother who loved me and had paid for me so dear; or how hecould have believed that because he was my father, charged with the careof my poor little body, he had control over the little bleeding heartwhich was not his to make to suffer. 

He is my father--God help me to think the best of him. 

THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

At half past six in the morning I was awakened by the loud ringing ofthe getting-up bell, and as soon as I could rouse myself from the deepsleep of childhood I saw that a middle-aged nun with a severe face wassaying a prayer, and that all the girls in the dormitory were kneelingin their beds while they made the responses. 

A few minutes later, when the girls were chattering and laughing as theydressed, making the room tingle with twittering sounds like a tree fullof linnets in the spring, a big girl came up to me and said:

"I am Mildred Bankes and Sister Angela says I am to look after youto-day. "

She was about fifteen years of age, and had a long plain-featured facewhich reminded me of one of my father's horses that was badly used bythe farm boys; but there was something sweet in her smile that made melike her instantly. 

She helped me to dress in my brown velvet frock, but said that one ofher first duties would be to take me to the lay sisters who made theblack habits which all the girls in the convent wore. 

It was still so early that the darkness of the room was just broken bypale shafts of light from the windows, but I could see that the childrenof my own age were only seven or eight altogether, while the majority ofthe girls were several years older, and Mildred explained this bytelling me that the children of the Infant Jesus, like myself, were sofew that they had been put into the dormitory of the children of theSacred Heart. 

In a quarter of an hour everybody was washed and dressed, and then, at aword from Sister Angela, the girls went leaping and laughing downstairsto the Meeting Room, which was a large hail, with a platform at thefarther end of it and another picture of the Sacred Heart, pierced withsharp thorns, on the wall. 

The Reverend Mother was there with the other nuns of the Convent, allpale-faced and slow eyed women wearing rosaries, and she said a longprayer, to which the scholars (there were seventy or eighty altogether)made responses, and then there was silence for five minutes, which weresupposed to be devoted to meditation, although I could not help seeingthat some of the big girls were whispering to each other while theirheads were down. 

After that, and Mass in the Church, we went scurrying away to theRefectory, which was now warm with the steam from our breakfast andbubbling with cheerful voices, making a noise that was like waterboiling in a saucepan. 

I was so absorbed by all I saw that I forgot to eat until Mildred nudgedme to do so, and even when my spoon was half way to my mouth somethinghappened which brought it down again. 

At the tinkle of a hand-bell one of the big girls had stepped up to thereading-desk and begun to read from a book which I afterwards knew to be"The Imitation of Christ. " She was about sixteen years of age, and herface was so vivid that I could not take my eyes off it. 

Her complexion was fair and her hair was auburn, but her eyes were sodark and searching that when she raised her head, as she often did, theyseemed to look through and through you. 

"Who is she?" I whispered. 

"Alma Lier, " Mildred whispered back, and when breakfast was over, and wewere trooping off to lessons, she told me something about her. 

Alma was an American. Her father was very rich and his home was in NewYork. But her mother lived in Paris, though she was staying at an hotelin Rome at present, and sometimes she came in a carriage to take herdaughter for a drive. 

Alma was the cleverest girl in the school too, and sometimes at the endof terms, when parents and friends came to the Convent and one of theCardinals distributed the prizes, she had so many books to take awaythat she could hardly carry them down from the platform. 

I listened to this with admiring awe, thinking Alma the most wonderfuland worshipful of all creatures, and when I remember it now, after allthese years, and the bitter experiences which have come with them, Ihardly know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that such was theimpression she first made on me. 

My class was with the youngest of the children, and Sister Angela was myteacher. She was so sweet to me that her encouragement was like a kissand her reproof like a caress; but I could think of nothing but Alma, and at noon, when the bell rang for lunch and Mildred took me back tothe Refectory, I wondered if the same girl would read again. 

She did, but this time in a foreign language, French as Mildredwhispered--from the letters of the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque--andmy admiration for Alma went up tenfold. I wondered if it could possiblyoccur that I should ever come to know her. 

There is no worship like that of a child, and life for me, which hadseemed so cold and dark the day before, became warm and bright with anew splendour. 

I was impatient of everything that took me away from the opportunity ofmeeting with Alma--the visit to the lay-sisters to be measured for mynew black clothes, the three o'clock "rosary, " when the nuns walked withtheir classes in the sunshine and, above all, the voluntary visit to theBlessed Sacrament in the Church of the Convent, which seemed to melarge and gorgeous, though divided across the middle by an open bronzescreen, called a Cancello--the inner half, as Mildred whispered, beingfor the inmates of the school, while the outer half was for thecongregation which came on Sunday to Benediction. 

But at four o'clock we had dinner, when Alma read again--this time inItalian--from the writings of Saint Francis of Sales--and then, to myinfinite delight, came a long recreation, when all the girls scamperedout into the Convent garden, which was still bright with afternoonsunshine and as merry with laughter and shouts as the seashore on awindy summer morning. 

The garden was a large bare enclosure, bounded on two sides by theconvent buildings and on the other two by a yellow wall and an avenuemade by a line of stone pines with heads like open umbrellas, but it hadno other foliage except an old tree which reminded me of Tommy the Mate, having gnarled and sprawling limbs, and standing like a weather-beatenold sailor, four-square in the middle. 

A number of the girls were singing and dancing around this tree, and Ifelt so happy just then that I should have loved to join them, but I wasconsumed by a desire to come to close quarters with the object of mydevotion, so I looked eagerly about me and asked Mildred if Alma waslikely to be there. 

"Sure to be, " said Mildred, and hardly were the words out of her mouthwhen Alma herself came straight down in our direction, surrounded by agroup of admiring girls, who were hanging on to her and laughing ateverything she said. 

My heart began to thump, and without knowing what I was doing I stoppeddead short, while Mildred went on a pace or two ahead of me. 

Then I noticed that Alma had stopped too, and that her great searchingeyes were looking down at me. In my nervousness, I tried to smile, butAlma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone of one who hadaccidentally turned up something with her toe that was little andridiculous, she said:

"Goodness, girls, what's this?"

Then she burst into a fit of laughter, in which the other girls joined, and looking me up and down they all laughed together. 

I knew what they were laughing at--the clothes my mother had made for meand I had felt so proud of. That burnt me like iron, and I think my lipmust have dropped, but Alma showed no mercy. 

"Dare say the little doll thinks herself pretty, though, " she said. Andthen she passed on, and the girls with her, and as they went off theylooked back over their shoulders and laughed again. 

Never since has any human creature--not even Alma herself--made mesuffer more than I suffered at that moment. My throat felt tight, tearsleapt to my eyes, disappointment, humiliation, and shame swept over melike a flood, and I stood squeezing my little handkerchief in my handand feeling as if I could have died. 

At the next moment Mildred stepped back to me, and putting her arm aboutmy waist she said:

"Never mind, Mary. She's a heartless thing. Don't have anything to dowith her. "

But all the sunshine had gone out of the day for me now and I cried forhours. I was still crying, silently but bitterly, when, at eighto'clock, we were saying the night prayers, and I saw Alma, who was inthe opposite benches, whispering to one of the girls who sat next to herand then looking straight across at me. 

And at nine o'clock when we went to bed I was crying more than ever, sothat after the good-night-bell had been rung and the lights had been putdown, Sister Angela, not knowing the cause of my sorrow, stepped up tomy bed before going down stairs for her own studies, and whispered:

"You mustn't fret for home, Mary. You will soon get used to it. "

But hardly had I been left alone, with the dull pain I could find noease for, when somebody touched me on the shoulder, and, looking up, Isaw a girl in her nightdress standing beside me. It was Alma and shesaid:

"Say, little girl, is your name O'Neill?"

Trembling with nervousness I answered that it was. 

"Do you belong to the O'Neills of Ellan?"

Still trembling I told her that I did. 

"My!" she said in quite another tone, and then I saw that by some meansI had begun to look different in her eyes. 

After a moment she sat on the side of my bed and asked questions aboutmy home--if it was not large and very old, with big stone staircases, and great open fireplaces, and broad terraces, and beautiful walks goingdown to the sea. 

I was so filled with the joy of finding myself looking grand in Alma'seyes that I answered "yes" and "yes" without thinking too closely abouther questions, and my tears were all brushed away when she said:

"I knew somebody who lived in your house once, and I'll tell her allabout you. "

She stayed a few moments longer, and when going off she whispered:

"Hope you don't feel badly about my laughing in the garden to-day. Ididn't mean a thing. But if any of the girls laugh again just say you'reAlma Lier's friend and she's going to take care of you. "

I could hardly believe my ears. Some great new splendour had suddenlydawned upon me and I was very happy. 

I did not know then that the house which Alma had been talking of wasnot my father's house, but Castle Raa. I did not know then that theperson who had lived there was her mother, and that in her comely andreckless youth she had been something to the bad Lord Raa who had lashedmy father and sworn at my grandmother. 

I did not know anything that was dead and buried in the past, orshrouded and veiled in the future. I only knew that Alma had calledherself my friend and promised to take care of me. So with a glad heartI went to sleep. 

FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

Alma kept her word, though perhaps her method of protection was such aswould have commended itself only to the heart of a child. 

It consisted in calling me Margaret Mary after our patron saint of theSacred Heart, in taking me round the garden during recreation as if Ihad been a pet poodle, and, above all, in making my bed the scene of theconversaziones which some of the girls held at night when they weresupposed to be asleep. 

The secrecy of these gatherings flattered me, and when the uncloudedmoon, in the depths of the deep blue Italian sky, looked in on my groupof girls in their nightdresses, bunched together on my bed, with my ownlittle body between, I had a feeling of dignity as well as solemnity andawe. 

Of course Alma was the chief spokeswoman at these whisperedconferences. Sometimes she told us of her drives into the BorgheseGardens, where she saw the King and Queen, or to the Hunt on theCampagna, where she met the flower of the aristocracy, or to the Pincio, where the Municipal band played in the pavilion, while ladies sat intheir carriages in the sunshine, and officers in blue cloaks salutedthem and smiled. 

Sometimes she indicated her intentions for the future, which wascertainly not to be devoted to retreats and novenas, or to witnessanother black dress as long as she lived, and if she married (which wasuncertain) it was not to be to an American, but to a Frenchman, becauseFrenchmen had "family" and "blood, " or perhaps to an Englishman, if hewas a member of the House of Lords, in which case she would attend allthe race-meetings and Coronations, and take tea at the Carlton, whereshe would eat _méringues glacés_ every day and have as many _éclairs_ asshe liked. 

And sometimes she would tell us the stories of the novels which shebribed one of the washing-women to smuggle into the convent--stories ofladies and their lovers, and of intoxicating dreams of kissing andfondling, at which the bigger girls, with far-off suggestions of sexualmysteries still unexplored, would laugh and shudder, and then Alma wouldsay:

"But hush, girls! Margaret Mary will be shocked. "

Occasionally these conferences would be interrupted by Mildred's voicefrom the other end of the dormitory, where she would raise her head fromher pillow and say:

"Alma Lier, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--keeping that child upwhen she ought to be asleep, instead of listening to your wickedstories. "

"Helloa, Mother Mildred, is that you?" Alma would answer, and then thegirls would laugh, and Mildred was supposed to be covered withconfusion. 

One night Sister Angela's footsteps were heard on the stairs, and thenthe girls flew back to their beds, where, with the furtive instinct oftheir age and sex, they pretended to be sleeping soundly when the Sisterentered the room. But the Sister was not deceived, and walking up theaisle between the beds she said in an angry tone:

"Alma Lier, if this ever occurs again I'll step down to the ReverendMother and tell her all about you. "

Little as I was, I saw that between Alma and Sister Angela there was asecret feud, which must soon break into open rupture, but for my ownpart I was entirely happy, being still proud of Alma's protection andonly feeling any misgivings when Mildred's melancholy eyes were lookingat me. 

Thus week followed week until we were close upon Christmas, and thegirls, who were to be permitted to go home before the Feast, began tocount the days to the holidays. I counted them too, and when anybodytalked of her brother I thought of Martin Conrad, though his faithfullittle figure was fading away from me, and when anybody spoke of herparents I remembered my mother, for whom my affection never failed. 

But, within a week from the time for breaking up, the Reverend Mothersent for me, and with a sinking heart I went to her room, knowing wellwhat she was going to say. 

"You are not to go home for the holidays this time, my child. You are toremain here, and Sister Angela is to stay to take care of you. "

She had a letter from Father Dan, telling her that my mother was stillunwell, and for this and other reasons it was considered best that Ishould not return at Christmas. 

Father Dan had written a letter to me also, beginning, "My dear daughterin Jesus" and ending "Yours in Xt, " saying it was not his fault that hecould not fulfil his promise, but my father was much from homenow-a-days and Aunt Bridget was more difficult than ever, so perhaps Ishould be happier at the Convent. 

It was a bitter blow, though the bitterest part of it lay in the fearthat the girls would think I was of so little importance to my peoplethat they did not care to see me. 

But the girls were too eager about their own concerns to care much aboutme, and even on the very last day and at the very last moment, wheneverything was bustle and joy, and boxes were being carried downstairs, and everybody was kissing everybody else and wishing each other a HappyChristmas, and then flying away like mad things, and I alone was beingleft, Alma herself, before she stepped into a carriage in which a stoutlady wearing furs was waiting to receive her, only said:

"By-by, Margaret Mary! Take care of Sister Angela. "

Next day the Reverend Mother went off to her cottage at Nemi, and theother nuns and novices to their friends in the country, and then SisterAngela and I were alone in the big empty, echoing convent--save for twoelderly lay Sisters, who cooked and cleaned for us, and the Chaplain, who lived by himself in a little white hut like a cell which stood atthe farthest corner of the garden. 

We moved our quarters to a room in the front of the house, so as to lookout over the city, and down into the piazza which was full of traffic, and after a while we had many cheerful hours together. 

During the days before Christmas we spent our mornings in visiting thechurches and basilicas where there were little illuminated models of theNativity, with the Virgin and the Infant Jesus in the stable among thestraw. The afternoons we spent at home in the garden, where theChaplain, in his black soutane and biretta, was always sitting under theold tree, reading his breviary. 

His name was Father Giovanni and he was a tall young man with a long, thin, pale face, and when Sister Angela first took me up to him shesaid:

"This is our Margaret Mary. "

Then his sad face broke into warm sunshine, and he stroked my head, andsent me away to skip with my skipping-rope, while he and Sister Angelasat together under the tree, and afterwards walked to and fro in theavenue between the stone pines and the wall, until they came to his cellin the corner, where she craned her neck at the open door as if shewould have liked to go in and make things more tidy and comfortable. 

On Christmas Day we had currant cake in honour of the feast, and SisterAngela asked Father Giovanni to come to tea, and he came, and was quitecheerful, so that when the Sister, who was also very happy, signalled tome to take some mistletoe from the bottom of a picture I held it overhis head and kissed him from behind. Then he snatched me up in his armsand kissed me back, and we had a great romp round the chairs and tables. 

But the Ave Maria began to ring from the churches, and Father Giovanni(according to the rule of our Convent) having to go, he kissed me again, and then I said:

"Why don't you kiss Sister Angela too?"

At that they only looked at each other and laughed, but after a momenthe kissed her hand, and then she went downstairs to see him out into thegarden. 

When she came back her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed, and, that night, when she took away her black and white whimple andgorget on going to bed, she stood before a looking-glass and wound herbeautiful light hair round her finger and curled it over her foreheadin the way it was worn by the ladies we saw in the streets. 

I think it was two nights later that she told me I was to go to bedearly because Father Giovanni was not well and she would have to go overto see him. 

She went, and I got into bed, but I could not sleep, and while I laywaiting for Sister Angela I listened to some men who as they crossed thepiazza were singing, in tremulous voices, to their mandolines andguitars, what I believed to be love songs, for I had begun to learnItalian. 

 "_Oh bella Napoli. Oh suol beato Onde soiridere volta il creato_. "

It was late when Sister Angela came back and then she was breathing hardas if she had been running. I asked if Father Giovanni's sickness wasworse, and she said no, it was better, and I was to say nothing aboutit. But she could not rest and at last she said:

"Didn't we forget to say our prayers, Mary?"

So I got up again and Sister Angela said one of the beautiful prayersout of our prayer-book. But her voice was very low and when she came tothe words:

"O Father of all mankind, forgive all sinners who repent of their sins, "she broke down altogether. 

I thought she was ill, but she said it was only a cold she had caught incrossing the garden and I was to go to sleep like a good girl and thinkno more about her. 

But in the middle of the night I awoke, and Sister Angela was crying. 

FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

Most of the girls were depressed when they returned to school, but Almawas in high spirits, and on the first night of the term she crept overto my bed and asked what we had been doing during the holidays. 

"Not a thing, eh?"

I answered that we had done lots of things and been very happy. 

"Happy? In this gloomy old convent? You and Sister Angela alone?"

I told her we had two lay sisters-and then there was Father Giovanni. 

"Father Giovanni? That serious old cross-bones?"

I said he was not always serious, and that on Christmas Day he had cometo tea and kissed me under the mistletoe. 

"Kissed you under the mistletoe!" said Alma, and then she whisperedeagerly, "He didn't kiss Sister Angela, did he?"

I suppose I was flattered by her interest, and this loosened my tongue, for I answered:

"He kissed her hand, though. "

"Kissed her hand? My! . . . Of course she was very angry . . . Wasn'tshe angry?"

I answered no, and in my simplicity I proceeded to prove this byexplaining that Sister Angela had taken Father Giovanni down to thedoor, and when he was ill she had nursed him. 

"Nursed him? In his own house, you mean?"

"Yes, at night, too, and she stayed until he was better, and caught acold coming back. "

"Well, I never!" said Alma, and I remember that I was very pleased withmyself during this interview, for by the moonlight which was thenshining into the room, I could see that Alma's eyes were sparkling. 

The next night we recommenced our conferences in bed, when Alma told usall about her holiday, which she had spent "way up in St. Moritz, " amongdeep snow and thick ice, skating, bobbing, lugging, and above all ridingastride, and dragging a man on skis behind her. 

"Such lots of fun, " she said. And the best of it was at night when therewere dances and fancy-dress balls with company which included all thesmart people in Europe, and men who gave a girl such a good time if shehappened to be pretty and was likely to have a dot. 

Alma had talked so eagerly and the girls had listened so intently, thatnobody was aware that Sister Angela had returned to the room until shestepped forward and said:

"Alma Lier, I'm ashamed of you. Go back to your bed, miss, this veryminute. "

The other girls crept away and I half covered my face with mybed-clothes, but Alma stood up to Sister Angela and answered her back. 

"Go to bed yourself, and don't speak to me like that, or you'll pay foryour presumption. "

"Pay? Presumption? You insolent thing, you are corrupting the wholeschool and are an utter disgrace to it. I warned you that I would tellthe Reverend Mother what you are and now I've a great mind to do it. "

"Do it. I dare you to do it. Do it to-night, and to-morrow morning _I_will do something. "

"What will you do, you brazen hussy?" said Sister Angela, but I couldsee that her lip was trembling. 

"Never mind what. If I'm a hussy I'm not a hypocrite, and as forcorrupting the school, and being a disgrace to it, I'll leave theReverend Mother to say who is doing that. "

Low as the light was I could see that Sister Angela was deadly pale. There was a moment of silence in which I thought she glanced in mydirection, and then stammering something which I did not hear, she leftthe dormitory. 

It was long before she returned and when she did so I saw her creep intoher cubicle and sit there for quite a great time before going to bed. Myheart was thumping hard, for I had a vague feeling that I had beenpartly to blame for what had occurred, but after a while I fell asleepand remembered no more until I was awakened in the middle of the nightby somebody kissing me in my sleep. 

It was Sister Angela, and she was turning away, but I called her back, and she knelt by my bed and whispered:

"Hush! I know what has happened, but I don't blame you for it. "

I noticed that she was wearing her out-door cloak, and that she wasbreathing rapidly, just as she did on the night she came from thechaplain's quarters, and when I asked if she was going anywhere she saidyes, and if I ever heard anything against Sister Angela I was to thinkthe best of her. 

"But you are so good. . . . "

"No, I am not good. I am very wicked. I should never have thought ofbeing a nun, but I'm glad now that I'm only a novice and have nevertaken the vows. "

After that she told me to go to sleep, and then she kissed me again, andI thought she was going to cry, but she rose hurriedly and left theroom. 

Next morning after the getting-up bell had been rung, and I had rousedmyself to full consciousness, I found that four or five nuns werestanding together near the door of the dormitory talking about somethingthat had happened during the night--Sister Angela had gone!

Half an hour afterwards when full of this exciting event, the girls wentbursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in greatagitation over an incident of still deeper gravity--Father Giovanni alsohad disappeared!

A convent school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, alwaysrumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by noonthe girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought they kneweverything that had happened--how at four in the morning Father Giovanniand Sister Angela had been seen to come out of the little door whichconnected the garden with the street; how at seven they had entered aclothing emporium in the Corso, where going in at one door as priest andnun they had come out at another as ordinary civilians; how at eightthey had taken the first train to Civita Vecchia, arriving in time tocatch a steamer sailing at ten, and how they were now on their way toEngland. 

By some mysterious instinct of their sex the girls had gathered withglistening eyes in front of the chaplain's deserted quarters, where Almaleaned against the wall with her insteps crossed and while the otherstalked she smiled, as much as to say, "I told you so. "

As for me I was utterly wretched, and being now quite certain that I wasthe sole cause of Sister Angela's misfortune, I was sitting under thetree in the middle of the garden, when Alma, surrounded by her usualgroup of girls, came down on me. 

"What's this?" she said. "Margaret Mary crying? Feeling badly for SisterAngela, is she? Why, you little silly, you needn't cry for her. She'shaving the time of her life, she is!"

At this the girls laughed and shuddered, as they used to do when Almatold them stories, but just at that moment the nun with the stern face(she was the Mother of the Novices) came up and said, solemnly:

"Alma Lier, the Reverend Mother wishes to speak to you. "

"To me?" said Alma, in a tone of surprise, but at the next moment shewent off jauntily. 

Hours passed and Alma did not return, and nothing occurred untilafternoon "rosary, " when the Mother of the Novices came again and takingme by the hand said:

"Come with me, my child. "

I knew quite well where we were going to, and my lip was trembling whenwe entered the Reverend Mother's room, for Alma was there, sitting bythe stove, and close beside her, with an angry look, was the stout ladyin furs whom I had seen in the carriage at the beginning of theholidays. 

"Don't be afraid, " said the Reverend Mother, and drawing me to her sideshe asked me to tell her what I had told Alma about Sister Angela. 

I repeated our conversation as nearly as I could remember it, and morethan once Alma nodded her head as if in assent, but the ReverendMother's face grew darker at every word and, seeing this, I said:

"But if Sister Angela did anything wrong I'm sure she was very sorry, for when she came back she said her prayers, and when she got to 'Fatherof all mankind, forgive all sinners . . . '"

"Yes, yes, that will do, " said the Reverend Mother, and then she handedme back to the Mother of the Novices, telling her to warn me to saynothing to the other children. 

Alma did not return to us at dinner, or at recreation, or at chapel(when another chaplain said vespers), or even at nine o'clock, when wewent to bed. But next morning, almost as soon as the Mother of theNovices had left the dormitory, she burst into the room saying:

"I'm leaving this silly old convent, girls. Mother has brought thecarriage, and I've only come to gather up my belongings. "

Nobody spoke, and while she wrapped up her brushes and combs in hernightdress, she joked about Sister Angela and Father Giovanni and thenabout Mildred Bankes, whom she called "Reverend Mother Mildred, " sayingit would be her turn next. 

Then she tipped up her mattress, and taking a novel from under it shethrew the book on to my bed, saying:

"Margaret Mary will have to be your story-teller now. By-by, girls!"

Nobody laughed. For the first time Alma's humour had failed her, andwhen we went downstairs to the Meeting Room it was with sedate and quietsteps. 

The nuns were all there, with their rosaries and crosses, looking ascalm as if nothing had occurred, but the girls were thinking of Alma, and when, after prayers, during the five minutes of silence formeditation, we heard the wheels of a carriage going off outside, we knewwhat had happened--Alma had gone. 

We were rising to go to Mass when the Reverend Mother said, "Children, I have a word to say to you. You all know that one of ournovices has left us. You also know that one of our scholars has justgone. It is my wish that you should forget both of them, and I shalllook upon it as an act of disobedience if any girl in the Convent evermentions their names again. "

All that day I was in deep distress, and when, night coming, I took mytroubles to bed, telling myself I had now lost Alma also, and it was allmy fault, somebody put her arms about me in the darkness and whispered:

"Mary O'Neill, are you awake?"

It was Mildred, and I suppose my snuffling answered her, for she said:

"You mustn't cry for Alma Lier. She was no friend of yours, and it wasthe best thing that ever happened to you when she was turned out of theconvent. "

SIXTEENTH CHAPTER

A child lives from hour to hour, and almost at the same moment that myheart was made desolate by the loss of my two friends it was quickenedto a new interest. 

Immediately after the departure of Sister Angela and Alma we were allgathered in the Meeting Room for our weekly rehearsal of the music ofthe Benediction--the girls, the novices, the nuns, the Reverend Mother, and a Maestro from the Pope's choir, a short fat man, who wore a blacksoutane and a short lace tippet. 

Benediction was the only service of our church which I knew, being theone my mother loved best and could do most of for herself in thesolitude of her invalid room, but the form used in the Convent differedfrom that to which I had been accustomed, and even the _Tantum ergo_ andthe _O Salutaris Hostia_ I could not sing. 

On this occasion a litany was added which I had heard before, and thencame a hymn of the Blessed Virgin which I remembered well. My mothersang it herself and taught me to sing it, so that when the Maestro, swinging his little ivory baton, began in his alto voice--

 "_Ave maris stella, Dei Mater alma--_"

I joined in with the rest, but sang in English instead of Latin Of allappeals to the memory that of music is the strongest, and after a momentI forgot that I was at school in Rome, being back in my mother's room inEllan, standing by her piano and singing while she played. I think Imust have let my little voice go, just as I used to do at home, when itrang up to the wooden rafters, for utterly lost to my surroundings I hadgot as far as--

 "_Virgin of all virgins, To thy shelter take us--_"

when suddenly I became aware that I alone was singing, the childrenabout me being silent, and even the Maestro's baton slowing down. Then Isaw that all eyes were turned in my direction, and overwhelmed withconfusion I stopped, for my voice broke and slittered into silence. 

"Go on, little angel, " said the Maestro, but I was trembling all over bythis time and could not utter a sound. 

Nevertheless the Reverend Mother said: "Let Mary O'Neill sing the hymnin church in future. "

As soon as I had conquered my nervousness at singing in the presence ofthe girls, I did so, singing the first line of each verse alone, and Iremember to have heard that the congregations on Sunday afternoons grewlarger and larger, until, within a few weeks, the church was denselycrowded. 

Perhaps my childish heart was stirred by vanity in all this, for Iremember that ladies in beautiful dresses would crowd to the bronzescreen that separated us from the public and whisper among themselves, "Which is she?" "The little one in the green scarf with the big eyes!""God bless her!"

But surely it was a good thing that at length life had began to have acertain joy for me, for as time went on I became absorbed in the life ofthe Convent, and particularly in the services of the church, so thathome itself began to fade away, and when the holidays came round andexcuses were received for not sending for me, the pain of mydisappointment became less and less until at last it disappearedaltogether. 

If ever a child loved her mother I did, and there were moments when Ireproached myself with not thinking of her for a whole day. These werethe moments when a letter came from Father Dan, telling me she was lesswell than before and her spark of life had to be coaxed and trimmed orit would splutter out altogether. 

But the effect of such warnings was wiped away when my mother wroteherself, saying I was to be happy as she was happy, because she knewthat though so long separated we should soon be together, and the timewould not seem long. 

Not understanding the deeper meaning that lay behind words like these, Iwas nothing loath to put aside the thought of home until little bylittle it faded away from me in the distance, just as the island itselfhad done on the day when I sailed out with Martin Conrad on our greatvoyage of exploration to St. Mary's Rock. 

Thus two years and a half passed since I arrived in Rome before thegreat fact befell me which was to wipe all other facts out of myremembrance. 

It was Holy Week, the season of all seasons for devotion to the SacredHeart, and our Convent was palpitating with the joy of its spiritualduties, the many offices, the masses for the repose of the souls inPurgatory, the preparations for Tenebrae, with the chanting of theMiserere, and for Holy Saturday and Easter Day, with the singing of theGloria and the return of the Alleluia. 

But beyond all this for me were the arrangements for my firstconfession, which, coming a little late, I made with ten or twelve othergirls of my sodality, feeling so faint when I took my turn and knelt bythe grating, and heard the whispering voice within, like something fromthe unseen, something supernatural, something divine, that I forgot allI had come to say and the priest had to prompt me. 

And beyond that again were the arrangements for my first communion, which was to take place on Easter morning, when I was to walk inprocession with the other girls, dressed all in white, behind a gildedfigure of the Virgin, singing "Ave maris stella, " through the piazzainto the church, where one of the Cardinals, in the presence of thefathers and mothers of the other children, was to put the Holy Wafer onour tongues and we were to know for the first time the joy of communionwith our Lord. 

But that was not to be for me. 

On the morning of Holy Wednesday the blow fell. The luminous grey of theItalian dawn was filtering through the windows of the dormitory, likethe light in a tomb, and a multitude of little birds on the old tree inthe garden were making a noise like water falling on small stones in afountain, when the Mother of the Novices came to my bedside and said:

"You are to go to the Reverend Mother as soon as possible, my child. "

Her voice, usually severe, was so soft that I knew something hadhappened, and when I went downstairs I also knew, before the ReverendMother had spoken, what she was going to say. 

"Mary, " she said, "I am Sorry to tell you that your mother is ill. "

I listened intently, fearing that worse would follow. 

"She is very ill--very seriously ill, and she wishes to see you. Therefore you are to go home immediately. "

The tears sprang to my eyes, and the Reverend Mother drew me to her sideand laid my head on her breast and comforted me, saying my dear motherhad lived the life of a good Christian and could safely trust in theredeeming blood of our Blessed Saviour. But I thought she must have someknowledge of the conditions of my life at home, for she told me thatwhatever happened I was to come back to her. 

"Tell your father you _wish_ to come back to me, " she said, and then sheexplained the arrangements that were being made for my journey. 

I was to travel alone by the Paris express which left Rome at sixo'clock that evening. The Mother of the Novices was to put me in asleeping car and see that the greatest care would be taken of me until Iarrived at Calais, where Father Donovan was to meet the train and takeme home. 

I cried a great deal, I remember, but everybody in the Convent was kind, and when, of my own choice, I returned to the girls at recreation, thesinister sense of dignity which by some strange irony of fate comes toall children when the Angel of Death is hovering over them, came to mealso--poor, helpless innocent--and I felt a certain distinction in mysorrow. 

At five o'clock the omnibus of the Convent had been brought round to thedoor, and I was seated in one corner of it, with the Mother of theNovices in front of me, when Mildred Bankes came running breathlesslydownstairs to say that the Reverend Mother had given her permission tosee me off. 

Half an hour later Mildred and I were sitting in a compartment of theWagon-Lit, while the Mother was talking to the conductor on theplatform. 

Mildred, whose eyes were wet, was saying something about herself whichseems pitiful enough now in the light of what has happened since. 

She was to leave the Convent soon, and before I returned to it she wouldbe gone. She was poor and an orphan, both her parents being dead, and ifshe had her own way she would become a nun. In any case ourcircumstances would be so different, our ways of life so far apart, thatwe might never meet again; but if . . . 

Before she had finished a bell rang on the platform, and a moment or twoafterwards the train slid out of the station. 

Then for the first time I began to realise the weight of the blow thathad fallen on me. I was sitting alone in my big compartment, we wererunning into the Campagna, the heavens were ablaze with the glory of thesunset, which was like fields of glistening fire, but darkness seemed tohave fallen on all the world. 

SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER

Early on Good Friday I arrived at Calais. It was a misty, rimy, clammymorning, and a thick fog was lying over the Channel. 

Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat collarturned up, waiting for me on the platform. I could see that he wasgreatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to maintain hiscomposure. 

"Now don't worry, my child, don't worry, " he said. "It will be allri. . . . But how well you are looking! And how you have grown! Andhow glad your poor mother will be to see you!"

I tried to ask how she was. "Is she . . . "

"Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's hope. "

We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwaterat seven the same evening. There we took train, for railways wererunning in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be greenwith grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red withfuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth. 

At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting for usand a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whisperedquestion of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered that my mother'scondition was unchanged. 

We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of newelectric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for thecarriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw. 

I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen, and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother ather window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason--to see ifthe blinds were down. 

Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown moreand more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how mymother was now, poor thing, she answered:

"Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this troubleand expense has been wasted. "

As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quietstep and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to mymother's bedroom. 

I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door. Iremember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought. I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on abrass nail at the pillow end. I remember my little cot which still stoodin the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as achild, and even some of the toys I had played with. 

A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me as Ientered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at length I didsee her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and small as to bealmost hidden in the big white bed. 

Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and AuntBridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and had apen in his ear, I remember. 

Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the hand andled me to my mother's side, where stooping over her, and making hisvoice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into a long tunnel, he said:

"My daughter! My daughter! Here is our little Mary. She has come home tosee you. "

Never shall I forget what followed. First, my mother's long lashesparted and she looked at me with a dazed expression as if still in asort of dream. Then her big eyes began to blaze like torches in darkhollows, and then (though they had thought her strength was gone and hervoice would never be heard again) she raised herself in her bed, stretched out her arms to me, and cried in loud strong tones:

"Mally veen! My Mally veen!"

How long I lay with my arms about my mother, and my mother's arms aboutme I do not know. I only know that over my head I heard Father Dansaying, as if speaking to a child:

"You are happy now, are you not?"

"Yes, yes, I am happy now, " my mother answered. 

"You have everything you want?"

"Everything--everything!"

Then came my father's voice, saying:

"Well, you've got your girl, Isabel. You wanted her, so we sent for her, and here she is. "

"You have been very good to me, Daniel, " said my mother, who was kissingmy forehead and crying in her joy. 

When I raised my head I found Father Dan in great excitement. 

"Did you see that then?" he was saying to Doctor Conrad. 

"I would have gone on my knees all the way to Blackwater to see it. "

"I couldn't have believed it possible, " the Doctor replied. 

"Ah, what children we are, entirely. God confounds all our reckoning. Wecan't count with His miracles. And the greatest of all miracles is amother's love for her child. "

"Let us leave her now, though, " said the Doctor. "She's like herselfagain, but still . . . "

"Yes, let us leave them together, " whispered Father Dan, and havingswept everybody out before him (I thought Aunt Bridget went awayashamed) he stepped off himself on tiptoe, as if treading on holyground. 

Then my mother, who was holding my hand and sometimes putting it to herlips, said:

"Tell me everything that has happened. "

As soon as my little tongue was loosed I told her all about my life atthe Convent--about the Reverend Mother and the nuns and the novices andthe girls (all except Sister Angela and Alma) and the singing of thehymn to the Virgin--talking on and on and on, without observing that, after a while, my mother's eyes had closed again, and that her hand hadbecome cold and moist. 

At length she said: "Is it getting dark, Mary?"

I told her it was night and the lamp was burning. 

"Is it going out then?" she asked, and when I answered that it was notshe did not seem to hear, so I stopped talking, and for some time therewas silence in which I heard nothing but the ticking of the clock on themantelpiece, the barking of a sheep dog a long way off, and the huskybreathing in my mother's throat. 

I was beginning to be afraid when the nurse returned. She was going tospeak quite cheerfully, but after a glance at my mother she went outquickly and came back in a moment with Doctor Conrad and Father Dan. 

I heard the doctor say something about a change, whereupon Father Danhurried away, and in a moment there was much confusion. The nurse spokeof taking me to another room but the doctor said:

"No, our little woman will be brave, " and then leading me aside hewhispered that God was sending for my mother and I must be quiet and notcry. 

Partly undressing I climbed into my cot and lay still for the next halfhour, while the doctor held his hand on my mother's pulse and the nursespread a linen cloth over a table and put four or five lighted candleson it. 

I remember that I was thinking that if "God sending for my mother" meantthat she was to be put into a box and buried under the ground it wasterrible and cruel, and perhaps if I prayed to our Lady He would notfind it in His heart to do so. I was trying to do this, beginning undermy breath, "O Holy Virgin, thou art so lovely, thou art so gracious . . . "when the nurse said:

"Here they are back again. "

Then I heard footsteps outside, and going to the window I saw a sightnot unlike that which I had seen on the night of the Waits. 

A group of men were coming towards the house, with Father Dan in themiddle of them. Father Dan, with his coat hung over his arms like acloak, was carrying something white in both hands, and the men werecarrying torches to light him on his way. 

I knew what it was--it was the Blessed Sacrament, which they werebringing to my mother, and when Father Dan had come into the room, saying "Peace be to this house, " and laid a little white box on thetable, and thrown off his coat, he was wearing his priest's vestmentsunderneath. 

Then the whole of my father's household--all except my fatherhimself--came into my mother's room, including Aunt Bridget, who satwith folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and the servants, whoknelt in a group by the door. 

Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after she hadopened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice seemed to bechoked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were suffering, andsometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the priest wereinspiring him. 

After Communion he gave my mother Extreme Unction--anointing the sweeteyes which had seen no evil, the dear lips which had uttered no wrong, and the feet which had walked in the ways of God. 

All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of achurch--no sound within except my father's measured tread in the roombelow, and none without except the muffled murmur which the sea makeswhen it is far away and going out. 

When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after asking for meand being told I was in the cot, she said:

"You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right now. "

A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more, and thenshe called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me and I lay withmy face hidden in her neck. 

What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of, almost toosacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of yesterday, whileother events of my life have floated away to the ocean of things thatare forgotten and lost. 

"Listen, darling, " she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she told meshe had heard all I had said about the Convent, and wondered if I wouldnot like to live there always, becoming one of the good and holy nuns. 

I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say how hardthe world was to a woman and how difficult she had found it. 

"Not that your father has been to blame--you must never think that, Mary, yet still . . . "

But tears from her tender heart were stealing down her face and she hadto stop. 

Even yet I had not realised all that the solemn time foreboded, for Isaid something about staying with my mother; and then in her sweetvoice, she told me nervously, breaking the news to me gently, that shewas going to leave me, that she was going to heaven, but she wouldthink of me when she was there, and if God permitted she would watchover me, or, if that might not be, she would ask our Lady to do so. 

"So you see we shall never be parted, never really. We shall always betogether. Something tells me that wherever you are, and whatever you aredoing, I shall know all about it. "

This comforted me, and I think it comforted my mother also, though Godknows if it would have done so, if, with her dying eyes, she could haveseen what was waiting for her child. 

It fills my heart brimful to think of what happened next. 

She told me to say a _De Profundis_ for her sometimes, and to think ofher when I sang the hymn to the Virgin. Then she kissed me and told meto go to sleep, saying she was going to sleep too, and if it shouldprove to be the eternal sleep, it would be only like going to sleep atnight and awaking in the morning, and then we should be together again, and "the time between would not seem long. "

"So good-night, darling, and God bless you, " she said. 

And as well as I could I answered her "Good-night!"

 * * * * *

When I awoke from the profound slumber of childhood it was noon of thenext day and the sun was shining. Doctor Conrad was lifting me out ofbed, and Father Dan, who had just thrown open the window, was saying ina tremulous voice:

"Your dear mother has gone to God. "

I began to cry, but he checked me and said:

"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful Paradise afterall her suffering. Let her go!"

So I lost her, my mother, my saint, my angel. 

It was Easter Eve, and the church bells were ringing the Gloria. 

EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER

After my mother's death there was no place left for me in my father'shouse. 

Betsy Beauty (who was now called Miss Betsy and gave herself more thanever the airs of the daughter of the family) occupied half her days withthe governess who had been engaged to teach her, and the other half indriving, dressed in beautiful clothes, to the houses of the gentry roundabout. 

Nessy MacLeod, called the young mistress, had become my father'ssecretary, and spent most of her time in his private room, a privilegewhich enlarged her pride without improving her manners. 

Martin Conrad I did not see, for in reward for some success at schoolthe doctor had allowed him to spend his Easter holidays in London inorder to look at Nansen's ship, the _Fram_, which had just then arrivedin the Thames. 

Hence it happened that though home made a certain tug at me, with itsfamiliar sights and sounds, and more than once I turned with timid stepstowards my father's busy room, intending to say, "Please, father, don'tsend me back to school, " I made no demur when, six or seven days afterthe funeral, Aunt Bridget began to prepare for my departure. 

"There's odds of women, " said Tommy the Mate, when I went into thegarden to say good bye to him "They're like sheep's broth, is women. Ifthere's a head and a heart in them they're good, and if there isn't youmight as well be supping hot water. Our Big Woman is hot water--butshe'll die for all. "

Within a fortnight I was back at the Convent, and there the ReverendMother atoned to me for every neglect. 

"I knew you would come back to me, " she said, and from that hour onwardshe seemed to be trying to make up to me for the mother I had lost. 

I became deeply devoted to her. As a consequence her spirit became myspirit, and, little by little, the religious side of the life of theConvent took complete possession of me. 

At first I loved the church and its services because the Reverend Motherloved them, and perhaps also for the sake of the music, the incense, theflowers and the lights on the altar; but after I had taken my communion, the mysteries of our religion took hold of me--the Confessional with itssense of cleansing and the unutterable sweetness of the Mass. 

For a long time there was nothing to disturb this religious side of mymind. My father never sent for me, and as often as the holidays cameround the Reverend Mother took me with her to her country home at Nemi. 

That was a beautiful place--a sweet white cottage, some twentykilometres from Rome, at the foot of Monte Cavo, in the middle of theremains of a mediæval village which contained a castle and a monastery, and had a little blue lake lying like an emerald among the green and redof the grass and poppies in the valley below. 

In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me, withits roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards running on therocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its brown-faced boys invelvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red petticoats and gorgeousoutside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed togirdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold. 

Years went by without my being aware of their going, for after a while Ibecame entirely happy. 

I heard frequently from home. Occasionally it was from Betsy Beauty, whohad not much to say beyond stories of balls at Government House, whereshe had danced with the young Lord Raa, and of hunts at which she hadridden with him. More rarely it was from Aunt Bridget, who usually beganby complaining of the ever-increasing cost of my convent clothes andended with accounts of her daughter's last new costume and how well shelooked in it. 

From Nessy MacLeod and my father I never heard at all, but Father Danwas my constant correspondent and he told me everything. 

First of my father himself--that he had carried out many of his greatenterprises, his marine works, electric railways, drinking and dancingpalaces, which had brought tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds ofthousands of pounds to Ellan, though the good Father doubted theadvantage of such innovations and lamented the decline of piety whichhad followed on the lust for wealth. 

Next of Aunt Bridget--that she was bringing up her daughter in the waysof worldly vanity and cherishing a serpent in her bosom (meaning NessyMacLeod) who would poison her heart some day. 

Next, of Tommy the Mate--that he sent his "best respec's" to the"lil-missy" but thought she was well out of the way of the Big Woman who"was getting that highty-tighty" that "you couldn't say Tom to a catbefore her but she was agate of you to make it Thomas. "

Then of Martin Conrad--that he was at college "studying for a doctor, "but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was "like a sea-gull inthe nest of a wood pigeon, " always longing to be out on the wild waves. 

Finally of the young Lord Raa--that the devil's dues must be in the man, for after being "sent down" from Oxford he had wasted his substance inriotous living in London and his guardian had been heard to say he mustmarry a rich wife soon or his estates would go to the hammer. 

Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period of sixyears. Yet welcome as were Father Dan's letters the life they describedseemed less and less important to me as time went on, for the outerworld was slipping away from me altogether and I was becoming more andmore immersed in my spiritual exercises. 

I spent much of my time reading religious books--the life of SaintTeresa, the meditations of Saint Francis of Sales, and, above all, theletters and prayers of our Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose love ofthe Sacred Heart was like a flaming torch to my excited spirit. 

The soul of Rome, too, seemed to enter into my soul--not the new Rome, for of that I knew nothing, but the old Rome, the holy city, that couldspeak to me in the silence of the night within the walls of myconvent-school, with its bells of the Dominican and Franciscanmonasteries on either side, its stories of miracles performed on thesick and dying by the various shrines of the Madonna, its accounts ofthe vast multitudes of the faithful who came from all ends of the earthto the ceremonials at St. Peter's, and, above all, its sense of theimmediate presence of the Pope, half a mile away, the Vicar andmouthpiece of God Himself. 

The end of it all was that I wished to become a nun. I said nothing ofmy desire to anybody, not even to the Reverend Mother, but day by day myresolution grew. 

Perhaps it was natural that the orphaned and homeless girl should plungewith all this passion into the aurora of a new spiritual life; but whenI think how my nature was made for love, human love, the love of husbandand children, I cannot but wonder with a thrill of the heart whether mymother in heaven, who, while she was on earth, had fought so hard withmy father for the body of her child, was now fighting with him for hersoul. 

I was just eighteen years of age when my desire to become a nun reachedits highest point, and then received its final overthrow. 

Mildred Bankes, who had returned to Rome, and was living as a novicewith the Little Sisters of the Poor, was about to make her vows, and theReverend Mother took me to see the ceremony. 

Never shall I forget the effect of it. The sweet summer morning, tingling with snow-white sunshine, the little white chapel in thegarden of the Convent, covered with flowers, the altar with its lightedtapers, the friends from without clad in gay costumes as for a festival, the bishop in his bright vestments, and then, Mildred herself, dressedas a bride in a beautiful white gown with a long white veil and attendedby other novices as bridesmaids. 

It was just like a marriage to look upon, except for the absence of avisible bridegroom, the invisible one being Christ. And the taking ofthe vows was like a marriage service too--only more solemn and sacredand touching--the bride receiving the ring on her finger, and promisingto serve and worship her celestial lover from that day forward, forbetter for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, aslong as life should last and through the eternity that was to follow it. 

I cried all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its loveliness; andwhen it was over and we went into the refectory, and Mildred told me shewas returning to England to work among the fallen girls of London, Ivowed in my heart, though I hardly understood what she was going to do, that I would follow her example. 

It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full of noiseand bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother I was formingthe resolution of telling her that very night that I meant to be a nun, for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I had seen and rememberingwhat my poor mother had wished for me, I determined that no other lifewould I live under any circumstances. 

Then came the shock. 

As we drew up at our door a postman was delivering letters. One of themwas for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it was in myfather's handwriting. She read it in silence, and in silence she handedit to me. It ran:

"_Madam, "I have come to Rome to take back my daughter. I believe her educationwill now be finished, and I reckon the time has arrived to prepare herfor the change in life that is before her. 

"The Bishop of our diocese has come with me, and we propose to pay ourrespects to you at ten o'clock prompt to-morrow morning. 

"Yours, Madam_, "DANIEL O'NEILL. "

NINETEENTH CHAPTER

I saw, as by a flash of light, what was before me, and my whole soulrose in rebellion against it. That my father after all the years duringwhich he had neglected me, should come to me now, when my plans wereformed, and change the whole current of my life, was an outrage--aniniquity. It might be his right--his natural right--but if so hisnatural right was a spiritual wrong--and I would resist it--to my lastbreath and my last hour I would resist it. 

Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but at teno'clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father himself, itwas on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that I went down tothe Reverend Mother's room. 

Except that his hair was whiter than before my father was not muchchanged. He rose as I entered, saying, "Here she is herself, " and when Iwent up to him he put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face. 

"Quite a little Italian woman grown! Like your mother though, " he said, and then speaking over my head to the Bishop, who sat on the other sideof the room, he added:

"Guess this will do, Bishop, eh?"

"Perfectly, " said the Bishop. 

I was colouring in confusion at the continued scrutiny, with a feelingof being looked over for some unexplained purpose, when the ReverendMother called me, and turning to go to her I saw, by the look of pain onher face that she, too, had been hurt by it. 

She put me to sit on a stool by the side of her chair, and taking myright hand she laid it in her lap and held it there during the whole ofthe interview. 

The Bishop, whom I had never seen before, was the first to speak. He wasa type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave, smiling, faultlesslydressed in silk soutane and silver buckled shoes, and wearing a heavygold chain with a jewelled cross. 

"Reverend Mother, " he said, "you would gather from Mr. O'Neill's letterthat he wishes to remove his daughter immediately--I presume there willbe no difficulty in his doing so?"

The Reverend Mother did not speak, but I think she must have bent herhead. 

"Naturally, " said the Bishop, "there will be a certain delay whilesuitable clothes are being made for her, but I have no doubt you willgive Mr. O'Neill your help in these preparations. "

My head was down, and I did not see if the Reverend Mother bowed again. But the two gentlemen, apparently satisfied with her silence, began totalk of the best date for my removal, and just when I was quivering withfear that without a word of protest I was to be taken away, the ReverendMother said:

"Monsignor!"

"Reverend Mother!"

"You are aware that this child"--here she patted my trembling hand--"hasbeen with me for ten years?"

"I am given to understand so. "

"And that during that time she has only once been home?"

"I was not aware--but no doubt it is as you say. "

"In short, that during the greater part of her life she has been left tomy undivided care?"

"You have been very good to her, very, and I'm sure her family areextremely grateful. "

"In that case, Monsignor, doesn't it seem to you that I am entitled toknow why she is being so suddenly taken away from me, and what is thechange in life which Mr. O'Neill referred to in his letter?"

The smile which had been playing upon the Bishop's face was smitten awayfrom it by that question, and he looked anxiously across at my father. 

"Tell her, " said my father, and then, while my heart thumped in my bosomand the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me, the Bishop gave abrief explanation. 

The time had not come when it would be prudent to be more definite, buthe might say that Mr. O'Neill was trying to arrange a happy and enviablefuture for his daughter, and therefore he wished her to return home toprepare for it. 

"Does that mean marriage?" said the Reverend Mother. 

"It may be so. I am not quite prepared to . . . "

"And that a husband has already been found for her?"

"That too perhaps. I will not say . . . "

"Monsignor, " said the Reverend Mother, sitting up with dignity "is thatfair?"

"Fair?"

"Is it fair that after ten years in which her father has done nothingfor her, he should determine what her life is to be, without regard toher wish and will?"

I raised my eyes and saw that the Bishop looked aghast. 

"Reverend Mother, you surprise me, " he said. "Since when has a fatherceased to be the natural guardian of his child? Has he not been so sincethe beginning of the world? Doesn't the Church itself build its laws onthat foundation?"

"Does it?" said the Reverend Mother shortly. And then (I could feel herhand trembling as she spoke): "Some of its servants do, I know. But whendid the Church say that anybody--no matter who--a father or anybodyelse--should take the soul of another, and control it and govern it, andput it in prison? . . . "

"My good lady, " said the Bishop, "would you call it putting the girl inprison to marry her into an illustrious family, to give her an historicname, to surround her with the dignity and distinction . . . "

"Bishop, " said my father, raising his hand, "I guess it's my right tobutt in here, isn't it?"

I saw that my father's face had been darkening while the Reverend Motherspoke, and now, rolling his heavy body in his chair so as to face her, he said:

"Excuse me, ma'am, but when you say I've done nothing for my gel here Isuppose you'll allow I've kept her and educated her?"

"You've kept and educated your dogs and horses, also, I dare say, but doyou claim the same rights over a human being?"

"I do, ma'am--I think I do. And when the human being happens to be myown daughter I don't allow that anybody else has anything to say. "

"If her mother were alive would _she_ have nothing to say?"

I thought my father winced at that word, but he answered:

"Her mother would agree to anything I thought best. "

"Her mother, so far as I can see, was a most unselfish, most submissive, most unhappy woman, " said the Reverend Mother. 

My father glanced quickly at me and then, after a moment, he said:

"I'm obliged to you, ma'am, much obliged. But as I'm not a man to throwwords away I'll ask you to tell me what all this means. Does it meanthat you've made plans of your own for my daughter without consultingme?"

"No, sir. "

"Then perhaps it means that the gel herself . . . "

"That may be so or not--I cannot say. But when you sent your daughter toa convent-school . . . "

"Wrong, ma'am, wrong for once. It was my wife's sister--who thinks thegel disobedient and rebellious and unruly . . . "

"Then your wife's sister is either a very stupid or a very bad-heartedwoman. "

"Ma'am?"

"I have known your daughter longer than she has, and there isn't a wordof truth in what she says. "

It was as much as I could do not to fall on the Reverend Mother's neck, but I clung to her hand with a convulsive grasp. 

"May be so, ma'am, may be no, " said my father. "But when you talk aboutmy sending my daughter to a convent-school I would have you know thatI've been so busy with my business . . . "

"That you haven't had time to take care of the most precious thing Godgave you. "

"Ma'am, " said my father, rising to his feet, "may I ask what right youhave to speak to me as if . . . "

"The right of one who for ten years has been a mother to your motherlesschild, sir, while you have neglected and forgotten her. "

At that my father, whose bushy eyebrows were heavily contracted, turnedto the Bishop. 

"Bishop, " he said, "is this what I've been paying my money for? Tenyears' fees, and middling high ones too, I'm thinking?"

And then the Bishop, apparently hoping to make peace, said suavely:

"But aren't we crossing the river before we reach the bridge? The girlherself may have no such objections. Have you?" he asked, turning to me. 

I was trembling more than ever now, and at first I could not reply. 

"Don't you wish to go back home with your father?"

"No, sir, " I answered. 

"And why not, please?"

"Because my father's home is no home to me--because my aunt has alwaysbeen unkind to me, and because my father has never cared for me orprotected me, and because . . . "

"Well, what else?"

"Because . . . Because I wish to become a nun. "

There was silence for a moment, and then my father broke into bitterlaughter. 

"So that's it, is it? I thought as much. You want to go into partnershipwith the Mother in the nun business, eh?"

"My mother wished me to become a nun, and I wish it myself, sir. "

"Your mother was a baby--that's what she was. "

"My mother was an angel, sir, " I said, bridling up, "and when she wasdying she hoped I should become a nun, and I can never become anythingelse under any circumstance. "

"Bah!" said my father, with a contemptuous lift of the hand, and thenturning to the Reverend Mother he said:

"Hark here, ma'am. There's an easy way and a hard way in mosteverything. I take the easy way first, and if it won't work I take thehard way next, and then it's stiff pulling for the people who pullagainst me. I came to Rome to take my daughter home. I don't feel calledupon to explain why I want to take her home, or what I'm going to dowith her when I get her there. I believe I've got the rights of a fatherto do what I mean to do, and that it will be an ugly business foranybody who aids and abets my daughter in resisting her father's will. So I'll leave her here a week longer, and when I come back, I'll expecther to be ready and waiting and willing--ready and waiting and willing, mind you--to go along with me. "

After saying this my father faced about and with his heavy flat stepwent out of the room, whereupon the Bishop bowed to the Reverend Motherand followed him. 

My heart was by this time in fierce rebellion--all that the pacifyinglife of the convent-school had done for me in ten years being suddenlyswept away--and I cried:

"I won't do it! I won't do it!"

But I had seen that the Reverend Mother's face had suddenly become verywhite while my father spoke to her at the end and now she said, in atimid, almost frightened tone:

"Mary, we'll go out to Nemi to-day. I have something to say to you. "

TWENTIETH CHAPTER

In the late afternoon of the same day we were sitting together for thelast time on the terrace of the Reverend Mother's villa. 

It was a peaceful evening, a sweet and holy time. Not a leaf wasstirring, not a breath of wind was in the air; but the voice of a youngboy, singing a love-song, came up from somewhere among the rocky ledgesof the vineyards below, and while the bell of the monastic church behindus was ringing the Ave Maria, the far-off bell of the convent church atGonzano was answering from the other side of the lake--like angelscalling to each other from long distances in the sky. 

"Mary, " said the Reverend Mother, "I want to tell you a story. It is thestory of my own life--mine and my sister's and my father's. "

I was sitting by her side and she was holding my hand in her lap, andpatting it, as she had done during the interview of the morning. 

"They say the reason so few women become nuns is that a woman is tooattached to her home to enter the holy life until she has sufferedshipwreck in the world. That may be so with most women. It was not sowith me. 

"My father was what is called a self-made man. But his fortune did notcontent him. He wanted to found a family. If he had had a son this mighthave been easy. Having only two daughters, he saw no way but that ofmarrying one of us into the Italian nobility. 

"My sister was the first to disappoint him. She fell in love with ayoung Roman musician. The first time the young man asked for my sisterhe was contemptuously refused; the second time he was insulted; thethird time he was flung out of the house. His nature was headstrong andpassionate, and so was my father's. If either had been different theresult might not have been the same. Yet who knows? Who can say?"

The Reverend Mother paused for a moment. The boy's voice in the vineyardwas going on. 

"To remove my sister from the scene of temptation my father took herfrom Rome to our villa in the hills above Albano. But the young musicianfollowed her. Since my father would not permit him to marry her he wasdetermined that she should fly with him, and when she hesitated to do sohe threatened her. If she did not meet him at a certain hour on acertain night my father would be dead in the morning. "

The Reverend Mother paused again. The boy's voice had ceased; thedaylight was dying out. 

"My sister could not bring herself to sacrifice either her father orher lover. Hence she saw only one way left--to sacrifice herself. "

"Herself?"

The Reverend Mother patted my hand. "Isn't that what women in tragiccircumstances are always doing?" she said. 

"By some excuse--I don't know what--she persuaded our father to changerooms with her that night--he going upstairs to her bedroom in thetower, and she to his on the ground floor at the back, opening on to thegarden and the pine forest that goes up the hill. 

"What happened after that nobody ever knew exactly. In the middle of thenight the servants heard two pistol shots, and next morning my sisterwas found dead--shot to the heart through an open window as she lay inmy father's bed. 

"The authorities tried in vain to trace the criminal. Only one personhad any idea of his identity. That was my father, and in his fierceanger he asked himself what he ought to do in order to punish the manwho had killed his daughter. 

"Then a strange thing happened. On the day before the funeral the youngmusician walked into my father's room. His face was white and wasted, and his eyes were red and swollen. He had come to ask if he might beallowed to be one of those to carry the coffin. My father consented. 'I'll leave him alone, ' he thought. 'The man is punished enough. '

"All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not a dryeye as the cortège passed from our chapel to the grave. Everybody knewthe story of my sister's hopeless love, but only two in the world knewthe secret of her tragic death--her young lover, who was sobbing aloudas he staggered along with her body on his shoulder, and her old father, who was walking bareheaded and in silence, behind him. "

My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand tocompose me--perhaps to compose herself also. It was now quite dark, thestars were coming out, and the bells of the two monasteries on oppositesides of the lake were ringing the first hour of night. 

"That's my sister's story, Mary, " said the Reverend Mother after awhile, "and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents aredifferent. 

"I was now my father's only child and all his remaining hopes centred inme. So he set himself to find a husband for me before the time came whenI should form an attachment for myself. His choice fell on amiddle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but impoverished family. 

"'He has a great name; you will have a great fortune--what more do youwant?' said my father. 

"We were back in Rome by this time, and there--at school or elsewhere--Ihad formed the conviction that a girl must passionately love the man shemarries, and I did not love the Roman noble. I had also been led tobelieve that a girl should be the first and only passion of the man whomarries her, and, young as I was, I knew that my middle-aged lover hadhad other domestic relations. 

"Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed, andthen, remembering my sister's fate, I pretended to agree, and I wasformally engaged. 

"I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out schemes bywhich to escape from it. Only one way seemed open to me then, andcherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and watched and madepreparations for carrying out my purpose. 

"At length the moment came to me. It was mid-Lent, and a masked ball wasgiven by my fiancé's friends in one of the old Roman palaces. I can seeit still--the great hall, ablaze with glowing frescoes, beautifulVenetian candelabras, gilded furniture, red and yellow damask andvelvet, and then the throng of handsome men in many uniforms andbeautiful women with rows of pearls falling from their naked throats. 

"I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic embroidered ingold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin band over myforehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair. 

"I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my middle-agedlover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and heedless. Atthree o'clock in the morning I returned home in my father's carriage. Atsix I had entered a convent. 

"Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and neitherdid I know what happened at home after I left it. The rule of theconvent was very strict. Sometimes, after morning prayers, the Superiorwould say, 'The mother of one of you is dead--pray for her soul, ' andthat was all we ever heard of the world outside. 

"But nature is a mighty thing, my child, and after five years I becamerestless and unhappy. I began to have misgivings about my vocation, butthe Mother, who was wise and human, saw what was going on in my heart. 'You are thinking about your father, ' she said, 'that he is growing old, and needing a daughter to take care of him. Go out, and nurse him, andthen come back to your cell and pray. '

"I went, but when I reached my father's house a great shock awaited me. A strange man was in the porter's lodge, and our beautiful palace waslet out in apartments. My father was dead--three years dead and buried. After my disappearance he had shut himself up in his shame and grief, for, little as I had suspected it and hard and cruel as I had thoughthim, he had really and truly loved me. During his last days his mind hadfailed him and he had given away all his fortune--scattered it, no oneknew how, as something that was quite useless--and then he died, aloneand broken-hearted. "

That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not try toexplain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's conduct, neitherdid she attempt to apply the moral of her story to my own circumstances. She left me to do that for myself. 

I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and closer toher until my head was on her breast. 

For some time longer we sat like this in the soft Italian night, whilethe fire-flies came out in clouds among the unseen flowers of the gardenand the dark air seemed to be alive with sparks of light. 

When the time came to go to bed the Reverend Mother took me to my room, and after some cheerful words she left me. But hardly had I lain down, shaken to the heart's core by what I had heard, and telling myself thatthe obedience of a daughter to her father, whatever he might demand ofher, was an everlasting and irreversible duty, imposed by no humanlaw-giver, and that marriage was a necessity, which was forced upon mostwomen by a mysterious and unyielding law of God, when the door openedand the Reverend Mother, with a lamp in her hand, came in again. 

"Mary, " she said, "I forgot to tell you that I am leaving the SacredHeart. The Sisters of my old convent have asked me to go back asSuperior. I have obtained permission to do so and am going shortly, sothat in any case we should have been parted soon. It is the Conventof. . . . "

Here she gave me the name of a private society of cloistered nuns in theheart of Rome. 

"I hope you will write to me as often as possible, and come to see mewhenever you can. . . . And if it should ever occur that . . . But no, Iwill not think of that. Marriage is a sacred tie, too, and under properconditions God blesses and hallows it. "

With that she left me in the darkness. The church bell was ringing, themonks of the Passionist monastery were getting up for their midnightoffices. 

TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER

A week later I was living with my father in the Hotel Europa on the edgeof the Piazza di Spagna. 

He was kinder to me than he had ever been before, but he did not tell mewhat the plans were which he had formed for my future, and I was left todiscover them for myself. 

Our apartment was constantly visited by ecclesiastics--Monsignori, Archbishops, even one of the Cardinals of the Propaganda, brought thereby Bishop Walsh (the Bishop of our own diocese), and I could not helpbut hear portions of their conversation. 

"It will be difficult, extremely difficult, " the Cardinal would say. "Such marriages are not encouraged by the Church, which holds that theyare usually attended by the worst consequences to both wife and husband. Still--under the exceptional circumstances--that the bridegroom's familywas Catholic before it was Protestant--it is possible, justpossible. . . . "

"Cardinal, " my father would answer, while his strong face was darkening, "excuse me, sir, but I'm kind of curious to get the hang of thisbusiness. Either it can be done or it can't. If it can, we'll just sailin and do it. But if it can't, I believe I'll go home quick and spend mymoney another way. "

Then there would be earnest assurances that in the end all would beright, only Rome moved slowly, and it would be necessary to havepatience and wait. 

My father waited three weeks, and meantime he occupied himself in seeingthe sights of the old city. 

But the mighty remains which are the luminous light-houses of thepast--the Forum with the broken columns of its dead centuries; theColiseum with its gigantic ruins, like the desolate crater of a moon;the Campagna with its hollow, crumbling tombs and shatteredaqueducts, --only vexed and irritated him. 

"Guess if I had my way, " he said, "I would just clean out this oldstone-yard of monuments to dead men, and make it more fit for livingones. "

At length the Bishop came to say that the necessary business had beencompleted, and that to mark its satisfactory settlement the Pope hadsignified his willingness to receive in private audience both my fatherand myself. 

This threw me into a state of the greatest nervousness, for I had begunto realise that my father's business concerned myself, so that when, early the following morning (clad according to instructions, my fatherin evening dress and I in a long black mantilla), we set out for theVatican, I was in a condition of intense excitement. 

What happened after we got out of the carriage at the bronze gate nearSt. Peter's I can only describe from a vague and feverish memory. Iremember going up a great staircase, past soldiers in many-colouredcoats, into a vast corridor, where there were other soldiers in othercostumes. I remember going on and on, through salon after salon, eachlarger and more luxurious than the last, and occupied by guards stillmore gorgeously dressed than the guards we had left behind. I remembercoming at length to a door at which a Chamberlain, wearing a sword, knelt and knocked softly, and upon its being opened announced our names. And then I remember that after all this grandeur as of a mediæval courtI found myself in a plain room like a library with a simple white figurebefore me, and . . . I was in the presence of the Holy Father himself. 

Can I ever forget that moment?

I had always been taught in the Convent to think of the Pope with areverence only second to that which was due to the Saints, so at first Ithought I should faint, and how I reached the Holy Father's feet I donot know. I only know that he was very sweet and kind to me, holding outthe delicate white hand on which he wore the fisherman's emerald ring, and smoothing my head after I had kissed it. 

When I recovered myself sufficiently to look up I saw that he was an oldman, with a very pale and saintly face; and when he spoke it was in sucha soft and fatherly voice that I loved and worshipped him. 

"So this is the little lady, " he said, "who is to be the instrument inthe hands of Providence in bringing back an erring family into the foldsof Mother Church. "

Somebody answered him, and then he spoke to me about marriage, saying itwas a holy state, instituted by the Almighty under a natural law andsanctioned by our divine Redeemer into the dignity of a Sacrament, sothat those who entered it might live together in peace and love. 

"It is a spiritual and sacred union, my child, " he said, "a type of theholy mystery of Christ's relation to His Church. "

Then he told me I was to make the best possible preparation for marriagein order to obtain the abundant graces of God, and to approach the altaronly after penance and communion. 

"And when you leave the church, my daughter, " he said, "do not profanethe day of your marriage by any sinful thought or act, but remember tobear yourself as if Jesus Christ Himself were with you, as He was at themarriage-feast in Cana of Galilee. "

Then he warned me that when I entered into the solemn contract of holymatrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it could not bebroken but by death. 

"Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder--remember that, too, my daughter. "

Finally he said something about children--that a Catholic marrying aperson of another religion must not enter into any agreement whereby anyof her children should be brought up in any other than the Catholicfaith. 

After that, and something said to my father which I cannot recall, hegave me his blessing, in words so beautiful and a voice so sweet that itfell on me like the soft breeze that comes out of the rising sun on asummer morning. 

"May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be withyou, my daughter. May your marriage be a yoke of love and peace, and mayyou see your children's children to the third and fourth generation. "

Then he raised me to my feet, and at a touch from the Chamberlain, Ibacked out of the room. 

When the door had closed on me I drew a deep breath, feeling as if I hadcome out of the Holy of Holies, and when I reached the Piazza of St. Peter's and came again upon the sight and sound of common things--thecabs and electric cars--it was the same as if I had suddenly descendedfrom heaven to earth. 

After my audience with the Pope, following on the Reverend Mother'sstory, all my objections to marriage had gone, and I wished to tell myfather so, but an opportunity did not arise until late the same nightand then it was he who was the first to speak. 

Being in good spirits, after a dinner to the ecclesiastics, he said, assoon as his guests had gone--speaking in the tone of one who believed hewas doing a great thing for me--

"Mary, matters are not quite settled yet, but you might as well knowright here what we're trying to fix up for you. "

Then he told me. 

I was to marry the young Lord Raa!

I was stunned. It was just as if the power of thought had been smittenout of me. 

TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER

That night, and during the greater part of the following day, I felt, without quite knowing why, as if I were living under the dark cloud of agathering thunderstorm. All my fear of the world, and my desire toescape from it, had fallen upon me afresh. Hence it was not altogetherby the blind leading of fate that half an hour before Ave Maria Ientered the church of the Convent which the Reverend Mother had given methe name of. 

The church was empty when I pushed past the leather hanging that coveredthe door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, soI went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the publicpart from the part occupied by the Sisters, and knelt on the neareststep. 

After a while the church-bell rang overhead, and then (the congregationhaving gathered in the meantime) the nuns came in by way of a corridorwhich seemed to issue out of the darkness from under a figure of theVirgin and Child. 

They were all in white, snow-white from head to foot, with a glimmer ofblue scapular beneath their outer garment, and they wore long thickveils which entirely concealed their features when they entered but wereraised when they reached their seats and faced the altar. 

Familiar as I was with similar scenes this one moved me as I had neverbefore been moved--the silent white figures, with hands clasped on theirbreasts, coming in one by one with noiseless and unhurried footsteps, like a line of wraiths from another world. 

But a still deeper emotion was to come to me. 

As the last of the nuns entered, the Superior as I knew she would be, Irecognised her instantly. It was my own Reverend Mother herself; andwhen, after kneeling to the altar, she came down to her seat nearest tothe screen, immediately in front of the place where I knelt, I knew bythe tremor of the clasped hands which held the rosary, that she had seenand recognised me. 

I trembled and my heart thumped against my breast. 

Then the priest entered and the Litany began. It was sung throughout. Almost the whole of the service was sung. Never had Benediction seemedso beautiful, so pathetic, so appealing, so irresistible. 

By the time the _Tantum ergo_ had been reached and the sweet femalevoices, over the soft swell of the organ, were rising to the vaultedroof in sorrowful reparation for the sins of all sinners in the worldwho did not pray for themselves, the religious life was calling to me asit had never called before. 

"Come away from the world, " it seemed to say. "Obedience to yourheavenly Father cancels all duty to your earthly one. Leave everythingyou fear behind you, and find peace and light and love. "

The service was over, the nuns had dropped their veils and gone out asslowly and noiselessly as they had come in (the last of them with herhead down): the sacristan with his long rod was extinguishing thecandles on the altar; the church was growing dark and a lay-sister inblack was rattling a bunch of keys at the door behind me before I movedfrom my place beside the rails. 

Then I awoke as from a dream, and looking longingly back at the darkcorridor down which the nuns had disappeared, I was turning to go when Ibecame aware that a young man was standing beside me and smiling into myface. 

"Mally, " he said very softly, and he held out his hand. 

Something in the voice made me giddy, something in the blue eyes made metremble. I looked at him but did not speak. 

"Don't you know me, Mally?" he said. 

I felt as if a rosy veil were falling over my face and neck. A flood ofjoy was sweeping through me. At last I knew who it was. 

It was Martin Conrad, grown to be a man, a tall, powerful, manly man, but with the same face still--an elusive ghost of the boy's face I usedto look up to and love. 

A few minutes later we were out on the piazza in front of the church, and with a nervous rush of joyous words he was telling me what hadbrought him to Rome. 

Having just "scraped through" his examinations, and taken hisdegree--couldn't have done so if the examiners had not been "jolly good"to him--he had heard that Lieut. . . . --was going down to the great icebarrier that bounds the South Pole, to investigate the sources of windsand tides, so he had offered himself as doctor to the expedition andbeen accepted. 

Sailing from the Thames ten days ago they had put into Naples thatmorning for coal, and taking advantage of the opportunity he had run upto Rome, remembering that I was at school here, but never expecting tosee me, and coming upon me by the merest accident in theworld--something having said to him, "Let's go in here and look at thisqueer old church. "

He had to leave to-morrow at two, though, having to sail the same night, but of course it would be luck to go farther south than Charcot and makeanother attack on the Antarctic night. 

I could see that life was full of faith and hope and all good things forhim, and remembering some episodes of the past I said:

"So you are going 'asploring' in earnest at last?"

"At last, " he answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and laughedas we stood together on the church steps, with little tender waves offeeling from our childhood sweeping to our feet. 

"And you?" he said. "You look just the same. I knew you instantly. Yetyou are changed too. So grown and so . . . So wonderfully. . . . "

I knew what he meant to say, and being too much of a child to pretendnot to know, and too much of a woman (notwithstanding my nun-likeimpulses) not to find joy in it, I said I was glad. 

"You've left the Convent, I see. When did that happen?"

I told him three weeks ago--that my father had come for me and we weregoing back to Ellan. 

"And then? What are you going to do then?" he asked. 

For a moment I felt ashamed to answer, but at last I told him that I wasgoing home to be married. 

"Married? When? To whom?"

I said I did not know when, but it was to be to the young Lord Raa. 

"Raa? Did you say Raa? That . . . Good G----But surely you know. . . . "

He did not finish what he was going to say, so I told him I did not knowanything, not having seen Lord Raa since I came to school, andeverything having been arranged for me by my father. 

"Not seen him since . . . Everything arranged by your father?"

"Yes. "

Then he asked me abruptly where I was staying, and when I told him hesaid he would walk back with me to the hotel. 

His manner had suddenly changed, and several times as we walked togetherup the Tritoni and along the Du Marcelli he began to say something andthen stopped. 

"Surely your father knows. . . . "

"If he does, I cannot possibly understand. . . . "

I did not pay as much attention to his broken exclamations as I shouldhave done but for the surprise and confusion of coming so suddenly uponhim again; and when, as we reached the hotel, he said:

"I wonder if your father will allow me to speak. . . . "

"I'm sure he'll be delighted, " I said, and then, in my great impatience, I ran upstairs ahead of him and burst into my father's room, crying:

"Father, whom do you think I have brought to see you--look!"

To my concern and discomfiture my father's reception of Martin was verycool, and at first he did not even seem to know him. 

"You don't remember me, sir?" said Martin. 

"I'm afraid I can't just place you, " said my father. 

After I had made them known to each other they sat talking about theSouth Pole expedition, but it was a chill and cheerless interview, andafter a few minutes Martin rose to go. 

"I find it kind of hard to figure you fellows out, " said my father. "Nomoney that I know of has ever been made in the Unknown, as you call it, and if you discover both Poles I don't just see how they're to be wortha two-cent stamp to you. But you know best, so good-bye and good luck toyou!"

I went out to the lift with Martin, who asked if he could take me for awalk in the morning. I answered yes, and inquired what hour he wouldcall for me. 

"Twelve o'clock, " he replied, and I said that would suit me exactly. 

The Bishop came to dine with us that night, and after dinner, when I hadgone to the window to look out over the city for the three lights on theLoggia of the Vatican, he and my father talked together for a long timein a low tone. They were still talking when I left them to go to bed. 

TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

At breakfast next morning my father told me that something unexpectedhad occurred to require that we should return home immediately, andtherefore he had sent over to Cook's for seats by the noon express. 

I was deeply disappointed, but I knew my father too well to demur, so Islipped away to my room and sent a letter to Martin, explaining thechange in our plans and saying good-bye to him. 

When we reached the station, however, I found Martin waiting on theplatform in front of the compartment that was labelled with our name. 

I thought my father was even more brusque with him than before, and theBishop, who was to travel with us, was curt almost to rudeness. ButMartin did not seem to mind that this morning, for his lower lip had thestiff setting which I had seen in it when he was a boy, and after Istepped into the carriage he stepped in after me, leaving the two men onthe platform. 

"Shall you be long away?" I asked. 

"Too long unfortunately. Six months, nine--perhaps twelve, worse luck!Wish I hadn't to go at all, " he answered. 

I was surprised and asked why, whereupon he stammered some excuse, andthen said abruptly:

"I suppose you'll not be married for some time at all events?"

I told him I did not know, everything depending on my father. 

"Anyhow, you'll see and hear for yourself when you reach home, and thenperhaps you'll. . . . "

I answered that I should have to do what my father desired, being agirl, and therefore. . . . 

"But surely a girl has some rights of her own, " he said, and then I wassilent and a little ashamed, having a sense of female helplessnesswhich I had never felt before and could find no words for. 

"I'll write to your father, " he said, and just at that moment the bellrang, and my father came into the compartment, saying:

"Now then, young man, if you don't want to be taken up to the North Poleinstead of going down to the South one. . . . "

"That's all right, sir. Don't you trouble about _me_. I can take care ofmyself, " said Martin. 

Something in his tone must have said more than his words to my fatherand the Bishop, for I saw that they looked at each other with surprise. 

Then the bell rang again, the engine throbbed, and Martin said, "Good-bye! Good-bye!"

While the train moved out of the station he stood bareheaded on theplatform with such a woebegone face that looking back at him my throatbegan to hurt me as it used to do when I was a child. 

I was very sad that day as we travelled north. My adopted country hadbecome dear to me during my ten years' exile from home, and I thought Iwas seeing the last of my beautiful Italy, crowned with sunshine anddecked with flowers. 

But there was another cause of my sadness, and that was the thought ofMartin's uneasiness about my marriage the feeling that if he hadanything to say to my father he ought to have said it then. 

And there was yet another cause of which I was quite unconscious--thatlike every other girl before love dawns on her, half of my nature wasstill asleep, the half that makes life lovely and the world dear. 

To think that Martin Conrad was the one person who could have wakened mysleeping heart! That a word, a look, a smile from him that day couldhave changed the whole current of my life, and that. . . . 

But no, I will not reproach him. Have I not known since the day on St. Mary's Rock that above all else he is a born gentleman?

And yet. . . . And yet. . . . 

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

And yet I was a fool, or in spite of everything I should have spoken toDaniel O'Neill before he left Rome. I should have said to him:

"Do you know that the man to whom you are going to marry your daughteris a profligate and a reprobate? If you _do_ know this, are youdeliberately selling her, body and soul, to gratify your lust of rankand power and all the rest of your rotten aspirations?"

That is what I ought to have done, but didn't do. I was afraid of beingthought to have personal motives--of interfering where I wasn't wanted, of butting in when I had no right. 

Yet I felt I _had_ a right, and I had half a mind to throw up everythingand go back to Ellan. But the expedition was the big chance I had beenlooking forward to and I could not give it up. 

So I resolved to write. But writing isn't exactly my job, and it took mea fortnight to get anything done to my satisfaction. By that time wewere at Port Said, and from there I posted three letters, --the first toDaniel O'Neill, the second to Bishop Walsh, the third to Father Dan. 

Would they reach in time? If so, would they be read and considered orresented and destroyed?

I did not know. I could not guess. And then I was going down into thedeep Antarctic night, where no sound from the living world could reachme. 

What would happen before I could get back? Only God could say. 

 M. C. 

SECOND PART

MY MARRIAGE

TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

Notwithstanding my father's anxiety to leave Rome we travelled slowlyand it was a week before we reached Ellan. By that time my depressionhad disappeared, and I was quivering with mingled curiosity and fear atthe thought of meeting the man who was to be my husband. 

My father, for reasons of his own, was equally excited, and as we sailedinto the bay at Blackwater he pointed out the developments which hadbeen made under his direction--the hotels, theatres, dancing palaces andboarding houses that lined the sea-front, and the electric railways thatran up to the tops of the mountains. 

"See that?" he cried. "I told them I could make this old island hum. "

On a great stone pier that stood deep into the bay, a crowd of peoplewere waiting for the arrival of the steamer. 

"That's nothing, " said my father. "Nothing to what you see at the heightof the season. "

As soon as we had drawn up alongside the pier, and before the passengershad landed, four gentlemen came aboard, and my heart thumped with thethought that my intended husband would be one of them; but he was not, and the first words spoken to my father were--

"His lordship's apologies, sir. He has an engagement to-day, but hopesto see you at your own house to-morrow morning. "

I recognised the speaker as the guardian (grown greyer and even lessprepossessing) who had crossed with the young Lord Raa when he was goingup to Oxford; and his companions were a smooth-faced man with searchingeyes who was introduced as his lordship's solicitor from London, a Mr. Curphy, whom I knew to be my father's advocate, and my dear old FatherDan. 

I was surprised to find Father Dan a smaller man than I had thought him, very plain and provincial, a little country parish priest, but he hadthe tender smile I always remembered, and the sweet Irish roll of thevowels that I could never forget. 

"God bless you, " he said. "How well you're looking! And how like yourmother, Lord rest her soul! I knew the Blessed Virgin would take care ofyou, and she has, she has. "

Three conveyances were waiting for us--a grand brougham for the Bishop, a big motor-car for the guardian and the London lawyer, and a stillbigger one for ourselves. 

"Well, s'long until to-morrow then, " cried my father, getting up intothe front row of his own ear, with the advocate beside him and FatherDan and myself behind. 

On the way home Father Dan talked of the business that had brought meback, saying I was not to think too much of anything he might have saidof Lord Raa in his letters, seeing that he had spoken from hearsay, andthe world was so censorious--and then there was no measuring themiraculous influence that might be exercised by a good woman. 

He said this with a certain constraint, and was more at ease when hespoke of the joy that ought to come into a girl's life at hermarriage--her first love, her first love-letter, her wedding-day and herfirst baby, all the sweet and wonderful things of a new existence whicha man could never know. 

"Even an old priest may see that, " he said, with a laugh and a pat of myhand. 

We dropped Mr. Curphy at his house in Holmtown, and then my father satwith us at the back, and talked with tremendous energy of what he haddone, of what he was going to do, and of all the splendours that werebefore me. 

"You'll be the big woman of the island, gel, and there won't be amother's son that dare say boo to you. "

I noticed that, in his excitement, his tongue, dropping the suggestionof his adopted country, reverted to the racy speech of his native soil;and I had a sense of being with him before I was born, when he returnedhome from America with millions of dollars at his back, and the peoplewho had made game of his father went down before his face like a flood. 

Such of them as had not done so then (being of the "aristocracy" of theisland and remembering the humble stock he came from) were to do so now, for in the second generation, and by means of his daughter's marriage, he was going to triumph over them all. 

"We'll beat 'em, gel! My gough, yes, we'll beat 'em!" he cried, with aflash of his black eyes and a masterful lift of his eyebrows. 

As we ran by the mansions of the great people of Ellan, he pointed themout to me with a fling of the arm and spoke of the families in a tone ofcontempt. 

"See that? That's Christian of Balla-Christian. The man snubbed me sixmonths ago. He'll know better six months to come. . . . That's Eyreton. His missus was too big to call on your mother--she'll call on you, though, you go bail. See yonder big tower in the trees? That'sFolksdale, where the Farragans live. The daughters have been walkingover the world like peacocks, but they'll crawl on it like cockroaches. . . Hulloh, here's ould Balgean of Eagle Hill, in his grand carriagewith his English coachman. . . . See that, though? See him doff his hatto you, the ould hypocrite? He knows something. He's got an inkling. Things travel. We'll beat 'em, gel, we'll beat 'em! They'll be round uslike bees about a honeypot. "

It was impossible not to catch the contagion of my father's triumphantspirits, and in my different way I found myself tingling with delight asI recognised the scenes associated with my childhood--the village, thebridge, the lane to Sunny Lodge and Murphy's Mouth, and the trees thatbordered our drive. 

Nearly everything looked smaller or narrower or lower than I hadthought, but I had forgotten how lovely they all were, lying so snuglyunder the hill and with the sea in front of them. 

Our house alone when we drove up to it seemed larger than I hadexpected, but my father explained this by saying:

"Improvements, gel! I'll show you over them to-morrow morning. "

Aunt Bridget (white-headed now and wearing spectacles and a white cap), Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of country comeliness)and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old maid who was doing herbest to be a girl) were waiting at the open porch when our car drew up, and they received me with surprising cordiality. 

"Here she is at last!" said Aunt Bridget. 

"And such luck as she has come home to!" said Betsy Beauty. 

There were compliments on the improvement in my appearance (Aunt Bridgetdeclaring she could not have believed it, she really could not), andthen Nessy undertook to take me to my room. 

"It's the same room still, Mary, " said my Aunt, calling to me as I wentupstairs. "When they were changing everything else I remembered yourpoor dear mother and wouldn't hear of their changing that. It isn't abit altered. "

It was not. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. But just as I wasbeginning for the first time in my life to feel grateful to AuntBridget, Nessy said:

"No thanks to her, though. If she'd had her way, she would have wipedout every trace of your mother, and arranged this marriage for her owndaughter instead. "

More of the same kind she said which left me with the impression that myfather was now the god of her idolatry, and that my return was not toowelcome to my aunt and cousin; but as soon as she was gone, and I wasleft alone, home began to speak to me in soft and entrancing whispers. 

How my pulses beat, how my nerves tingled! Home! Home! Home!

From that dear spot everything seemed to be the same, and everything hadsomething to say to me. What sweet and tender and touching memories!

Here was the big black four-post bed, with the rosary hanging at itshead; and here was the praying-stool with the figure of Our Lady on thewall above it. 

I threw up the window, and there was the salt breath of the sea in thecrisp island air; there was the sea itself glistening in the afternoonsunshine; there was St Mary's Rock draped in its garment of sea-weed, and there were the clouds of white sea-gulls whirling about it. 

Taking off my hat and coat I stepped downstairs and out of thehouse--going first into the farm-yard where the spring-less carts werestill clattering over the cobble-stones; then into the cow-house, wherethe milkmaids were still sitting on low stools with their heads againstthe sides of the slow-eyed Brownies, and the milk rattling in theirnoisy pails; then into the farm-kitchen, where the air was full of theodour of burning turf and the still sweeter smell of cakes baking on agriddle; and finally into the potting-shed in the garden, where Tommythe Mate (more than ever like a weather-beaten old salt) was stillworking as before. 

The old man looked round with his "starboard eye, " and recognised meinstantly. 

"God bless my sowl, " he cried, "if it isn't the lil' missy! Well, well!Well, well! And she's a woman grown! A real lady too! My gracious; yes, "he said, after a second and longer look, "and there hasn't been thematch of her on this island since they laid her mother under the sod!"

I wanted to ask him a hundred questions, but Aunt Bridget, who had beenwatching from a window, called from the house to say she was "mashing" acup of tea for me, so I returned to the drawing-room where (my fatherbeing busy with his letters in the library) Betsy Beauty talked for halfan hour about Lord Raa, his good looks, distinguished manners andgeneral accomplishments. 

"But aren't you just dying to see him?" she said. 

I saw him the following morning. 

TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

I was sitting in my own room, writing to the Reverend Mother, to tellher of my return home, when I heard the toot of a horn and raising myeyes saw a motor-car coming up the drive. It contained three gentlemen, one of them wore goggles and carried a silver-haired terrier on hisknees. 

A little later Nessy MacLeod came to tell me that Lord Raa and his partyhad arrived and I was wanted immediately. 

I went downstairs hesitatingly, with a haunting sense of coming trouble. Reaching the door of the drawing-room I saw my intended husband for thefirst time--there being nothing in his appearance to awaken in me thememory of ever having seen him before. 

He was on the hearthrug in front of the fire, talking to Betsy Beauty, who was laughing immoderately. To get a better look at him, and at thesame time to compose myself, I stopped for a moment to speak to thethree gentlemen (the two lawyers and Lord Raa's trustee or guardian) whowere standing with my father in the middle of the floor. 

He was undoubtedly well-dressed and had a certain air of breeding, buteven to my girlish eyes he betrayed at that first sight the character ofa man who had lived an irregular, perhaps a dissipated life. 

His face was pale, almost puffy, his grey eyes were slow and heavy, hismoustache was dark and small, his hair was thin over his forehead, andhe had a general appearance of being much older than his years, which Iknew to be thirty-three. 

His manners, when I approached him, were courteous and gentle, almostplayful and indulgent, but through all their softness there pierced acertain hardness, not to say brutality, which I afterwards learned (whenlife had had its tug at me) to associate with a man who has spent muchof his time among women of loose character. 

Betsy Beauty made a great matter of introducing us; but in a drawlingvoice, and with a certain play of humour, he told her it was quiteunnecessary, since we were very old friends, having made each other'sacquaintance as far back as ten years ago, when I was the prettiestlittle woman in the world, he remembered, though perhaps my manners werenot quite cordial. 

"We had a slight difference on the subject of kisses. Don't you rememberit?"

Happily there was no necessity to reply, for my father came to say thathe wished to show his lordship the improvements he had been making, andthe rest of us were at liberty to follow them. 

The improvements consisted chiefly of a new wing to the old house, containing a dining room, still unfurnished, which had been modelled, asI found later, on the corresponding room in Castle Raa. 

With a proud lift of his white head my father pointed out the beautiesof his new possession, while my intended husband, with his monocle tohis eye, looked on with a certain condescension, and answered with alanguid humour that narrowly bordered on contempt. 

"Oak, sir, solid oak, " said my father, rapping with his knuckles on thetall, dark, heavy wainscoting. 

"As old as our hearts and as hard as our heads, I suppose, " said LordRaa. 

"Harder than some, sir, " said my father. 

"Exactly, " said Lord Raa in his slow drawl, and then there was generallaughter. 

The bell rang for luncheon, and we went into the plain old dining room, where Aunt Bridget placed her principal guest on her right and told himall about her late husband, the Colonel, his honours and militaryachievements. 

I could see that Lord Raa was soon very weary of this, and more thanonce, sitting by his side, I caught the cynical and rather superciliousresponses to which, under the gloss of his gracious manners, AuntBridget seemed quite oblivious. 

I was so nervous and embarrassed that I spoke very little duringluncheon, and even Aunt Bridget observed this at last. 

"Mary, dear, why don't you speak?" she said. 

But without waiting for my reply she proceeded to explain to hislordship that the strangest change had come over me since I was a child, when I had been the sauciest little chatterbox in the world, whereas nowI was so shy that it was nearly impossible to get a word out of me. 

"Hope I shall be able to get one word out of her, at least, " said hislordship, whereupon Aunt Bridget smiled significantly and Betsy Beautyburst into fits of laughter. 

Almost before the meal was over, my father rose from his seat at thehead of the table, and indicating the lawyers who sat near to him, hesaid:

"These gentlemen and I have business to fix up--money matters and allthat--so I guess we'll step into the library and leave you young peopleto look after yourselves. "

Everybody rose to leave the room. 

"All back for tea-time, " said Aunt Bridget. 

"Of course you don't want _me_, " said Betsy Beauty with a giggle, and atthe next moment I was alone with his lordship, who drew a long breaththat was almost like a yawn, and said:

"Is there no quiet place we can slip away to?"

There was the glen at the back of the house (the Cape Flora of MartinConrad), so I took him into that, not without an increasing sense ofembarrassment. It was a clear October day, the glen was dry, and the airunder the shadow of the thinning trees was full of the soft light of thelate autumn. 

"Ah, this is better, " said his lordship. 

He lit a cigar and walked for some time by my side without speaking, merely flicking the seeding heads off the dying thistles with hiswalking stick, and then ruckling it through the withered leaves withwhich the path was strewn. 

But half way up the glen he began to look aslant at me through hismonocle, and then to talk about my life in Rome, wondering how I couldhave been content to stay so long at the Convent, and hinting at arumour which had reached him that I had actually wished to stay therealtogether. 

"Extraordinary! 'Pon my word, extraordinary! It's well enough for womenwho have suffered shipwreck in their lives to live in such places, butfor a young gal with any fortune, any looks . . . Why I wonder shedoesn't die of _ennui_. "

I was still too nervous and embarrassed to make much protest, so he wenton to tell me with what difficulty he supported the boredom of his ownlife even in London, with its clubs, its race-meetings, its dances, itstheatres and music halls, and the amusement to be got out of some of theladies of society, not to speak of certain well-known professionalbeauties. 

One of his great friends--his name was Eastcliff--was going to marry themost famous of the latter class (a foreign dancer at the "Empire"), andsince he was rich and could afford to please himself, why shouldn't he?

When we reached the waterfall at the top of the glen (it had been theNorth Cape of Martin Conrad), we sat on a rustic seat which standsthere, and then, to my still deeper embarrassment, his lordship'sconversation came to close quarters. 

Throwing away his cigar and taking his silver-haired terrier on his laphe said:

"Of course you know what the business is which the gentlemen arediscussing in the library?"

As well as I could for the nervousness that was stifling me, I answeredthat I knew. 

He stroked the dog with one hand, prodded his stick into the gravel withthe other, and said:

"Well, I don't know what your views about marriage are. Mine, I may say, are liberal. "

I listened without attempting to reply. 

"I think nine-tenths of the trouble that attends married life--thebreakdowns and what not--come of an irrational effort to tighten themarriage knot. "

Still I said nothing. 

"To imagine that two independent human beings can be tied together likea couple of Siamese twins, neither to move without the other, livingprecisely the same life, year in, year out . . . Why, it's silly, positively silly. "

In my ignorance I could find nothing to say, and after another moment myintended husband swished the loosened gravel with his stick and said:

"I believe in married people leaving each other free--each going his andher own way--what do you think?"

I must have stammered some kind of answer--I don't know what--for Iremember that he said next:

"Quite so, that's my view of matrimony, and I'm glad to see you appearto share it. . . . Tell the truth, I was afraid you wouldn't, " he added, with something more about the nuns and the convent. 

I wanted to say that I didn't, but my nervousness was increasing everymoment, and before I could find words in which to protest he wasspeaking to me again. 

"Our friends in the library seem to think that you and I could get alongtogether, and I'm disposed to think they're right--aren't you?"

In my ignorance and helplessness, and with the consciousness of what Iwas expected to do, I merely looked at him without speaking. 

Then he fixed his monocle afresh, and, looking back at me in a curiousway, he said:

"I don't think I should bore you, my dear. In fact, I should be ratherproud of having a good-looking woman for my wife, and I fancy I couldgive you a good time. In any case"--this with a certaincondescension--"my _name_ might be of some use to you. "

A sort of shame was creeping over me. The dog was yawning in my face. Myintended husband threw it off his knee. 

"Shall we consider it a settled thing, then?" he asked, and when in myconfusion I still made no reply (having nothing which I felt myselfentitled to say), he said something about Aunt Bridget and what she hadtold him at luncheon about my silence and shyness, and then rising tohis feet he put my arm through his own, and turned our faces towardshome. 

That was all. As I am a truthful woman, that was everything. Not a wordfrom me, nay, not half a word, merely a passive act of silentacquiescence, and in my youthful and almost criminal innocence I wascommitted to the most momentous incident of my life. 

But if there was no love-making, no fondling, no kissing, no courtshipof any kind, and none of the delirious rapture which used to bedescribed in Alma's novels, I was really grateful for that, andimmensely relieved to find that matters could he completed without them. 

When we reached the house, the bell was ringing for tea and my fatherwas coming out of the library, followed by the lawyers. 

"So that's all right, gentlemen?" he was saying. 

"Yes, that's all right, sir, " they were answering; and then, seeing usas we entered, my father said to Lord Raa:

"And what about you two?"

"We're all right also, " said his lordship in his drawling voice. 

"Good!" said my father, and he slapped his lordship sharply on the back, to his surprise, and I think, discomfiture. 

Then with a cackle of light laughter among the men, we all trooped intothe drawing room. 

Aunt Bridget in her gold-rimmed spectacles and new white cap, poured outthe tea from our best silver tea-pot, while Nessy MacLeod with ageranium in her red hair, and Betsy Beauty, with large red roses in herbosom, handed round the cups. After a moment, my father, with a radiantface, standing back to the fire, said in a loud voice:

"Friends all, I have something to tell you. "

Everybody except myself looked up and listened, though everybody knewwhat was coming. 

"We've had a stiff tussle in the library this afternoon, but everythingis settled satisfactory--and the marriage is as good as made. "

There was a chorus of congratulations for me, and a few for hislordship, and then my father said again:

"Of course there'll be deeds to draw up, and I want things done correct, even if it costs me a bit of money. But we've only one thing more to fixup to-day, and then we're through--the wedding. When is it to come off?"

An appeal was made to me, but I felt it was only formal, so I glancedacross to Lord Raa without speaking. 

"Come now, " said my father, looking from one to the other. "The cleancut is the short cut, you know, and when I'm sot on doing a thing, Ican't take rest till it's done. What do you say to this day next month?"

I bowed and my intended husband, in his languid way, said:

"Agreed!"

A few minutes afterwards the motor was ordered round, and the gentlemenprepared to go. Then the silver-haired terrier was missed, and for thefirst time that day his lordship betrayed a vivid interest, telling usits price and pedigree and how much he would give rather than lose it. But at the last moment Tommy appeared with the dog in his arms anddropped it into the car, whereupon my intended husband thanked himeffusively. 

"Yes, " said Tommy, "I thought you set store by _that_, sir. "

At the next moment the car was gone. 

"Well, you _are_ a lucky girl, " said Betsy Beauty; and Aunt Bridgetbegan to take credit to herself for all that had come to pass, and toindicate the methods by which she meant to manage Castle Raa as soon asever I became mistress of it. 

Thus in my youth, my helplessness, my ignorance, and my inexperience Ibecame engaged to the man who had been found and courted for me. If Iacquiesced, I had certainly not been consulted. My father had notconsulted me. My intended husband had not consulted me. Nobody consultedme. I am not even sure that I thought anybody was under any obligationto consult me. Love had not spoken to me, sex was still asleep in me, and my marriage was arranged before my deeper nature knew what was beingdone. 

TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

The next weeks were full of hurry, hubbub and perturbation. Our housewas turned upside down. Milliners, sewing-maids and dressmakers wereworking day and night. Flowers, feathers and silk remnants were flowinglike sea-wrack into every room. Orders were given, orders were retractedand given again, and then again retracted. 

Such flying up and down stairs! Everybody so breathless! Everybody sohappy! Every face wearing a smile! Every tongue rippling with laughter!The big grey mansion which used to seem so chill and cold felt for thefirst time like a house of joy. 

In the midst of these busy preparations I had no time to think. Mysenses were excited. I was dazed, stunned, wrapped round by a kind ofwarm air of hot-house happiness, and this condition of moralintoxication increased as the passing of the days brought freshdevelopments. 

Our neighbours began to visit us. My father had been right about thegreat people of the island. Though they had stood off so long, theyfound their account in my good fortune, and as soon as my marriage wasannounced they came in troops to offer their congratulations. 

Never, according to Tommy the Mate, had the gravel of our carriage drivebeen so rucked up by the pawing feet of high-bred horses. But theirowners were no less restless. It was almost pitiful to see theirshamefacedness as they entered our house for the first time, and towatch the shifts they were put to in order to account for the fact thatthey had never been there before. 

Aunt Bridget's vanity was too much uplifted by their presence to beparticular about their excuses, but my father's contempt of theirsubterfuges was naked and undisguised, and I hardly know whether to feelamused or ashamed when I think of how he scored off them, how he lashedthem to the bone, with what irony and sarcasm he scorched theirtime-serving little souls. 

When they were very great folks, the "aristocracy" of Ellan, hepretended not to know who they were, and asked their names, theirfather's names, and what parishes they came from. 

"Some of the Christians of Balla-Christian, are you? Think of that now. And me a born Ellanman, and not knowing you from Adam!"

When they were very near neighbours, with lands that made boundary withour own, he pretended to think they had been twenty years abroad, orperhaps sick, or even dead and buried. 

"Too bad, ma'am, too bad, " he would say. "And me thinking you were underthe sod through all the lonely years my poor wife was ill and dying. "

But when they were insular officials, who "walked on the stars, " andsometimes snubbed him in public, the rapier of ridicule was too lightfor his heavy hand, and he took up the sledge-hammer, telling them hewas the same man to-day as yesterday, and only his circumstances weredifferent--his daughter being about to become the lady of the firsthouse in the island, and none of them being big enough to be left out ofit. 

After such scenes Aunt Bridget, for all her despotism within her owndoors, used to tremble with dread of our neighbours taking lastingoffence, but my father would say:

"Chut, woman, they'll come again, and make no more faces about it. "

They did, and if they were shy of my father they were gracious enoughto me, saying it was such a good thing for society in the island thatCastle Raa was to have a lady, a real lady, at the head of it at last. 

Then came their wedding presents--pictures, books, silver ornaments, gold ornaments, clocks, watches, chains, jewellery, until my bedroom wasblocked up with them. As each fresh parcel arrived there would be a rushof all the female members of our household to open it, after which BetsyBeauty would say:

"What a lucky girl you are!"

I began to think I was. I found it impossible to remain unaffected bythe whirlwind of joyous turmoil in which I lived. The refulgence of thepresent hour wiped out the past, which seemed to fade away altogether. After the first few days I was flying about from place to place, andwherever I went I was a subject for congratulation and envy. 

If there were moments of misgiving, when, like the cold wind out of atunnel, there came the memory of the Reverend Mother and the story shehad told me at Nemi, there were other moments when I felt quite surethat, in marrying Lord Raa, I should be doing a self-sacrificing thingand a kind of solemn duty. 

One such moment was when Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, who with hisclammy hands always made me think of an over-fatted fish, came to tellhim that, after serious legal difficulties, the civil documents had beenagreed to, for, after he had finished with my father, he drew me asideand said, as he smoothed his long brown beard:

"You ought to be a happy girl, Mary. I suppose you know what you aredoing for your father? You are wiping out the greatest disappointment ofhis life, and rectifying the cruelty--the inevitable cruelty--of thelaw, when you were born a daughter after he had expected a son. "

Another such moment was when the Bishop came, in his grand carriage, tosay that after much discussion he had persuaded his lordship to sign thenecessary declaration that all the children of our union, irrespectiveof sex, should be brought up as Catholics, for taking me aside, as theadvocate had done the day before, he said, in his suave voice, fingeringhis jewelled cross:

"I congratulate you, my child. Yours is a great and preciousprivilege--the privilege of bringing back to the Church a family whichhas been estranged from it for nineteen years. "

At the end of a fortnight we signed the marriage settlement. The littleceremony took place in the drawing-room of my father's house. Myintended husband, who had not been to see me in the meantime, broughtwith him (as well as his trustee and lawyer) a lady and a gentleman. 

The lady was his maiden aunt, Lady Margaret Anslem, a fair woman ofabout forty, fashionably dressed, redolent of perfume, and (except tome, to whom she talked quite amicably) rather reserved and haughty, asif the marriage of her nephew into our family were a bitter pill whichshe had compelled herself to swallow. 

The gentleman was a tall young man wearing a very high collar andcravat, and using a handkerchief with embroidered initials in the cornerof it. He turned out to be the Hon. Edward Eastcliff--the great friendwho, being rich enough to please himself, was about to marry theprofessional beauty. 

I noticed that Aunt Bridget, with something of the instinct of the flyabout the flame, immediately fixed herself upon the one, and that BetsyBeauty attached herself to the other. 

Lord Raa himself looked as tired as before, and for the first half-hourhe behaved as if he did not quite know what to do with himself forwretchedness and _ennui_. 

Then the deeds were opened and spread out on a table, and though thegentlemen seemed to be trying not to discuss the contents aloud I couldnot help hearing some of the arrangements that had been made for thepayment of my intended husband's debts, and certain details of hisannual allowance. 

Looking back upon that ugly hour, I wonder why, under the circumstances, I should have been so wounded, but I remember that a sense of discomfortamounting to shame came upon me at sight of the sorry bargaining. Itseemed to have so little to do with the spiritual union of souls, whichI had been taught to think marriage should be. But I had no time tothink more about that before my father, who had signed the documentshimself in his large, heavy hand, was saying. 

"Now, gel, come along, we're waiting for your signature. "

I cannot remember that I read anything. I cannot remember that anythingwas read to me. I was told where to sign, and I signed, thinking whatmust be must be, and that was all I had to do with the matter. 

I was feeling a little sick, nevertheless, and standing by the tirewith one foot on the fender, when Lord Raa came up to me at the end, andsaid in his drawling voice:

"So it's done. "

"Yes, it's done, " I answered. 

After a moment he talked of where we were to live, saying we must ofcourse pass most of our time in London. 

"But have you any choice about the honeymoon, " he said, "where we shouldspend it, I mean?"

I answered that he would know best, but when he insisted on my choosing, saying it was my right to do so, I remembered that during my time in theConvent the one country in the world I had most desired to see was theHoly Land. 

Never as long as I live shall I forget the look in his lordship's greyeyes when I gave this as my selection. 

"You mean Jerusalem--Nazareth--the Dead Sea and all that?" he asked. 

I felt my face growing red as at a frightful _faux pas_, but hislordship only laughed, called me his "little nun, " and said that since Ihad been willing to leave the choice to him he would suggest Egypt andItaly, and Berlin and Paris on the way back, with the condition that weleft Ellan for London on the day of our marriage. 

After the party from Castle Raa had gone, leaving some of their familylace and pearls behind for the bride to wear at her wedding, and afterAunt Bridget had hoped that "that woman" (meaning Lady Margaret) didn'tintend to live at the Castle after my marriage, because such a thingwould not fit in with her plans "at all, at all, " I mentioned thearrangements for the honeymoon, whereupon Betsy Beauty, to whom Italywas paradise, and London glimmered in an atmosphere of vermillion andgold, cried out as usual:

"What a lucky, lucky girl you are!"

But the excitement which had hitherto buoyed me up was partly dispelledby this time, and I was beginning to feel some doubt of it. 

TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

As my wedding-day approached and time ran short, the air of joy whichhad pervaded our house was driven out by an atmosphere of irritation. Wewere all living on our nerves. The smiles that used to be at everybody'sservice gave place to frowns, and, in Aunt Bridget's case, to angrywords which were distributed on all sides and on all occasions. 

As a consequence I took refuge in my room, and sat long hours there inmy dressing-gown and slippers, hearing the hubbub that was going on inthe rest of the house, but taking as little part in it as possible. Inthis semi-conventual silence and solitude, the excitement which hadswept me along for three weeks subsided rapidly. 

I began to think, and above all to feel, and the one thing I felt beyondeverything else was a sense of something wanting. 

I remembered the beautiful words of the Pope about marriage as a mysticrelation, a sacred union of souls, a bond of love such as Christ's lovefor His Church, and I asked myself if I felt any such love for the manwho was to become my husband. 

I knew I did not. I reminded myself that I had had nearly noconversation with him, that our intercourse had been of the briefest, that I had seen him only three times altogether, and that I scarcelyknew him at all. 

And yet I was going to marry him! In a few days more I should be hiswife, and we should be bound together as long as life should last!

Then I remembered what Father Dan had said about a girl's first love, her first love-letter, and all the sweet, good things that should cometo her at the time of her marriage. 

None of them had come to me. I do not think my thoughts of love wereever disturbed by any expectation of the delights of the heart--languorsof tenderness, long embraces, sighs and kisses, and the joys and feversof the flesh--for I knew nothing about them. But, nevertheless, I askedmyself if I had mistaken the matter altogether. Was love reallynecessary? In all their busy preparations neither my father, nor myhusband, nor the lawyers, nor the Bishop himself, had said anythingabout that. 

I began to sleep badly and to dream. It was always the same dream. I wasin a frozen region of the far north or south, living in a ship which wasstuck fast in the ice, and had a great frowning barrier before it thatwas full of dangerous crevasses. Then for some reason I wanted to writea letter, but was unable to do so, because somebody had trodden on mypen and broken it. 

It seems strange to me now as I look back upon that time, that I did notknow what angel was troubling the waters of my soul--that Nature waswhispering to me, as it whispers to every girl at the first great crisisof her life. But neither did I know what angel was leading my footstepswhen, three mornings before my wedding-day, I got up early and went outto walk in the crisp salt air. 

Almost without thinking I turned down the lane that led to the shore, and before I was conscious of where I was going, I found myself nearSunny Lodge. The chimney was smoking for breakfast, and there was asmell of burning turf coming from the house, which was so pretty andunchanged, with the last of the year's roses creeping over the porch andround the windows of the room in which I had slept when a child. 

Somebody was digging in the garden. It was the doctor in his shirtsleeves. 

"Good morning, doctor, " I called, speaking over the fence. 

He rested on his spade and looked up, but did not speak for a moment. 

"Don't you know who I am?" I asked. 

"Why yes, of course; you must be. . . . "

Without finishing he turned his head towards the porch and cried:

"Mother! Mother! Come and see who's here at last!"

Martin's mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I thought, butwith the same dear womanly face over her light print frock, which was assweet as may-blossom. 

She held up both hands at sight of me and cried:

"There, now! What did I tell you, doctor! Didn't I say they might marryher to fifty lords, but she wouldn't forget her old friends!"

I laughed, the doctor laughed, and then she laughed, and the sweetestpart of it was that she did not know what we were laughing at. 

Then I opened the gate and stepped up and held out my hand, andinvoluntarily she wiped her own hand (which was covered with meal fromthe porridge she was making) before taking mine. 

"Goodness me, it's Mary O'Neill. "

"Yes, it's I. "

"But let me have a right look at you, " she said, taking me now by bothhands. "They were saying such wonderful things about the young misthressthat I wasn't willing to believe them. But, no, no, " she said, after amoment, "they didn't tell me the half. "

I was still laughing, but it was as much as I could do not to cry, so Isaid:

"May I come in?"

"My goodness yes, and welcome, " she said, and calling to the doctor towash his hands and follow us, she led the way into the kitchen-parlour, where the kettle was singing from the "slowery" and a porridge-pot wasbubbling over the fire. 

"Sit down. Take the elbow-chair in the chiollagh [the hearth place]. There! That's nice. Aw, yes, you know the house. "

Being by this time unable to speak for a lump in my throat that washurting me, I looked round the room, so sweet, so homely, so closelylinked with tender memories of my childhood, while Martin's mother(herself a little nervous and with a touching softness in her face) wenton talking while she stirred the porridge with a porridge-stick. 

"Well, well! To think of all the years since you came singing carols tomy door! You remember it, don't you? . . . Of course you do. 'Doctor, ' Isaid, 'don't talk foolish. _She'll_ not forget. _I_ know Mary O'Neill. She may be going to be a great lady, but haven't I nursed her on myknee?'"

"Then you've heard what's to happen?" I asked. 

"Aw yes, woman, yes, " she answered in a sadder tone, I thought. "Everybody's bound to hear it--what with the bands practising for theprocession, and the bullocks roasting for the poor, and the fireworksand the illuminations, and I don't know what. "

She was silent for a moment after that, and then in her simple way shesaid:

"But it's all as one if you love the man, even if he _is_ a lord. "

"You think that's necessary, don't you?"

"What, _millish?_"

"Love. You think it's necessary to love one's husband?"

"Goodness sakes, girl, yes. If you don't have love, what have you?What's to keep the pot boiling when the fire's getting low and thewinter's coming on, maybe? The doctor's telling me some of the fineladies in London are marrying without it--just for money and titles andall to that. But I can't believe it, I really can't! They've got theirtroubles same as ourselves, poor things, and what's the use of theirfine clothes and grand carriages when the dark days come and the night'sfalling on them?"

It was harder than ever to speak now, so I got up to look at some silvercups that stood on the mantelpiece. 

"Martin's, " said his mother, to whom they were precious as rubies. "Hewon them at swimming and running and leaping and climbing and all tothat. Aw, yes, yes! He was always grand at games, if he couldn't learnhis lessons, poor boy. And now he's gone away from us--looking for SouthPoles somewheres. "

"I know--I saw him in Rome, " said I. 

She dropped her porridge-stick and looked at me with big eyes. 

"Saw him? In Rome, you say? After he sailed, you mean?"

I nodded, and then she cried excitedly to the doctor who was just thencoming into the house, after washing his hands under the pump. 

"Father, she saw himself in Rome after he sailed. "

There was only one _himself_ in that house, therefore it was notdifficult for the doctor to know who was meant. And so great was theeagerness of the old people to hear the last news of the son who was theapple of their eye that I had to stay to breakfast and tell them allabout our meeting. 

While Martin's mother laid the tables with oat-cake and honey and bowlsof milk and deep plates for the porridge, I told the little there was totell, and then listened to their simple comments. 

"There now, doctor! Think of that! Those two meeting in foreign partsthat used to be such friends when they were children! Like brother andsister, you might say. And whiles and whiles we were thinking that someday . . . But we'll say no more about that now, doctor. "

"No, we'll say no more about that now, Christian Ann, " said the doctor. 

Then there was a moment of silence, and it was just as if they had beenrummaging among half-forgotten things in a dark corner of their house, and had come upon a cradle, and the child that had lived in it was dead. 

It was sweet, but it was also painful to stay long in that house oflove, and as soon as I had eaten my oat-cake and honey I got up to go. The two good souls saw me to the door saying I was not to expect eitherof them at the Big House on my wedding-day, because she was no woman forsmart clothes, and the doctor, who was growing rheumatic, had given uphis night-calls, and therefore his gig, so as to keep down expenses. 

"We'll be at the church, though, " said Martin's mother. "And if wedon't see you to speak to, you'll know we're there and wishing youhappiness in our hearts. "

I could not utter a word when I left them; but after I had walked alittle way I looked back, intending to wave my farewell, and there theywere together at the gate still, and one of her hands was on thedoctor's shoulder--the sweet woman who had chosen love against theworld, and did not regret it, even now when the night was falling onher. 

I had to pass the Presbytery on my way home, and as I did so, I sawFather Dan in his study. He threw up the window sash and called in asoft voice, asking me to wait until he came down to me. 

He came down hurriedly, just as he was, in his worn and discolouredcassock and biretta, and walked up the road by my side, breathingrapidly and obviously much agitated. 

"The Bishop is staying with me over the wedding, and he is in such afury that . . . Don't worry. It will be all right. But . . . "

"Yes?"

"Did you see young Martin Conrad while you were in Rome?"

I answered that I did. 

"And did anything pass between you . . . About your marriage, I mean?"

I told him all that I had said to Martin, and all that Martin had saidto me. 

"Because he has written a long letter to the Bishop denouncing it, andcalling on him to stop it. "

"To stop it?"

"That's so. He says it is nothing but trade and barter, and if theChurch is willing to give its blessing to such rank commercialism, letit bless the Stock Exchange, let it sanctify the slave market. "

"Well?"

"The Bishop threatens to tell your father. 'Who is this young man, ' hesays, 'who dares to . . . ' But if I thought there was nothing more toyour marriage than . . . If I imagined that what occurred in the case ofyour dear mother . . . But that's not all. "

"Not all?"

"No. Martin has written to me too, saying worse--far worse. "

"What does he say, Father Dan?"

"I don't really know if I ought to tell you, I really don't. Yet if it'strue . . . If there's anything in it . . . "

I was trembling, but I begged him to tell me what Martin had said. Hetold me. It was about my intended husband--that he was a man ofirregular life, a notorious loose liver, who kept up a connection withsomebody in London, a kind of actress who was practically his wifealready, and therefore his marriage with me would be--so Martin hadsaid--nothing but "legalised and sanctified concubinage. "

With many breaks and pauses my dear old priest told me this story, as ifit were something so infamous that his simple and innocent heart couldscarcely credit it. 

"If I really thought it was true, " he said, "that a man living such alife could come here to marry my little . . . But no, God could notsuffer a thing like that. I must ask, though. I must make sure. We liveso far away in this little island that . . . But I must go back now. TheBishop will be calling for me. "

Still deeply agitated, Father Dan left me by the bridge, and at the gateof our drive I found Tommy the Mate on a ladder, covering, with flowersfrom the conservatory, a triumphal arch which the joiner had hammered upthe day before. 

The old man hardly noticed me as I passed through, and this prompted meto look up and speak to him. 

"Tommy, " I said, "do you know you are the only one who hasn't said agood word to me about my marriage?"

"Am I, missy?" he answered, without looking down. "Then maybe that'sbecause I've had so many bad ones to say to other people. "

I asked which other people. 

"Old Johnny Christopher, for one. I met him last night at the 'Horse andSaddle. ' 'Grand doings at the Big House, they're telling me, ' saysJohnny. 'I won't say no, ' I says. 'It'll be a proud day for thegrand-daughter of Neill the Lord when she's mistress of Castle Raa, 'says Johnny. 'Maybe so, ' I says, 'but it'll be a prouder day for CastleRaa when she sets her clane little foot in it. '"

TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

I should find it difficult now, after all that has happened since, toconvey an adequate idea of the sense of shame and personal dishonourwhich was produced in me by Father Dan's account of the contents ofMartin's letter. It was like opening a door out of a beautiful gardeninto a stagnant ditch. 

That Martin's story was true I had never one moment's doubt, firstbecause Martin had told it, and next because it agreed at all pointswith the little I had learned of Lord Raa in the only real conversationI had yet had with him. 

Obviously he cared for the other woman, and if, like his friendEastcliff, he had been rich enough to please himself, he would havemarried her; but being in debt, and therefore in need of an allowance, he was marrying me in return for my father's money. 

It was shocking. It was sinful. I could not believe that my father, thelawyers and the Bishop knew anything about it. 

I determined to tell them, but how to do so, being what I was, a younggirl out of a convent, I did not know. 

Never before had I felt so deeply the need of my mother. If she had beenalive I should have gone to her, and with my arms about her neck and myface in her breast, I should have told her all my trouble. 

There was nobody but Aunt Bridget, and little as I had ever expected togo to her under any circumstances, with many misgivings and after muchhesitation I went. 

It was the morning before the day of my marriage. I followed my aunt asshe passed through the house like a biting March wind, scoldingeverybody, until I found her in her own room. 

She was ironing her new white cap, and as I entered (looking pale, Isuppose) she flopped down her flat iron on to its stand and cried:

"Goodness me, girl, what's amiss? Caught a cold with your morning walks, eh? Haven't I enough on my hands without that? We must send for thedoctor straight. We can't have _you_ laid up now, after all this troubleand expense. "

"It isn't that, Auntie. "

"Then in the name of goodness what is it?"

I told her, as well as I could for the cold grey eyes that kept lookingat me through their gold-rimmed spectacles. At first my aunt listenedwith amazement, and then she laughed outright. 

"So _you've_ heard that story, have you? Mary O'Neill, " she said, with athump of her flat iron, "I'm surprised at you. "

I asked if she thought it wasn't true. 

"How do I know if it's true? And what do I care whether it is or isn't?Young men will be young men, I suppose. "

She went on with her ironing as she added:

"Did you expect you were marrying a virgin? If every woman asked forthat there would be a nice lot of old maids in the world, wouldn'tthere?"

I felt myself flushing up to the forehead, yet I managed to say:

"But if he is practically married to the other woman. . . . "

"Not he married. Whoever thinks about marriage in company like that? Youmight as well talk about marriage in the hen coop. "

"But all the same if he cares for her, Auntie. . . . "

"Who says he cares for her? And if he does he'll settle her off and getrid of her before he marries you. "

"But will that be right?" I said, whereupon my aunt rested her iron andlooked at me as if I had said something shameful. 

"Mary O'Neill, what do you mean? Of course it will be right. Heshouldn't have two women, should he? Do you think the man's a barn-doorrooster?"

My confusion was increasing, but I said that in any case my intendedhusband could not care for _me_, or he would have seen more of me. 

"Oh, you'll see enough of him by and by. Don't you worry about that. "

I said I was not sure that he had made me care much for him. 

"Time enough for that, too. You can't expect the man to work miracles. "

Then, with what courage was left me, I tried to say that I had beentaught to think of marriage as a sacrament, instituted by the Almightyso that those who entered it might live together in union, peace andlove, whereas . . . 

But I had to stop, for Aunt Bridget, who had been looking at me with herhard lip curled, said:

"Tut! That's all right to go to church with on Sunday, but on weekdaysmarriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical matter. Justan arrangement for making a home, and getting a family, and bringing upchildren--that's what marriage is, if you ask me. "

"But don't you think love is necessary?"

"Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about inpoetry and songs--bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and all thatnonsense--no!" said my aunt, with a heavy bang on her ironing. 

"That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love, and itgenerally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women have nothing todo with it. Look at me, " she said, spitting on the bottom of her iron, "do you think I married for love when I married the colonel? No indeed!'Here's a quiet respectable man with a nice income, ' I said, 'and if Iput my little bit to his little bit we'll get along comfortably if he_is_ a taste in years, ' I said. Look at your mother, though. She was oneof the marrying-for-love kind, and if we had let her have her way wherewould she have been afterwards with her fifteen years as an invalid? Andwhere would you have been by this time? No, " said Aunt Bridget, bringingdown her flat-iron with a still heavier bang, "a common-sense marriage, founded on suitability of position and property, and all that, is theonly proper sort of match. And that's what's before you now, girl, sofor goodness' sake don't go about like the parish pan, letting everybusybody make mischief with you. My Betsy wouldn't if she had yourchance--I can tell you that much, my lady. "

I did not speak. There was another bang or two of the flat-iron, andthen, "Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in time. Ifyou don't exactly love your husband when you marry him you'll love himlater on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know Ihad to, and if. . . . "

"But if she can't, Auntie?"

"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about it. "

It was useless to say more, so I rose to go. 

"Yes, go, " said Aunt Bridget. "I'm so bothered with other people'sbusiness that my head's all through-others. And, Mary O'Neill, " shesaid, looking after me as I passed through the door, "for mercy's sakedo brighten up a hit, and don't look as if marrying a husband was liketaking a dose of jalap. It isn't as bad as that, anyway. "

It served me right. I should have known better. My aunt and I spokedifferent languages; we stood on different ground. 

Returning to my room I found a letter from Father Dan. It ran--

_"Dear Daughter in Jesus, "I have been afraid to go far into the story we spoke about from fear ofoffending my Bishop, but I have inquired of your father and he assuresme that there is not a word of truth in it. 

"So I am compelled to believe that our good Martin must have beenmisinformed, and am dismissing the matter from my mind. Trusting youwill dismiss it from your mind also, "Yours in Xt. , "D. D. "_

TWENTY-NINTH CHAPTER

I could not do as Father Dan advised, being now enmeshed in the threadsof innumerable impulses unknown to myself, and therefore firmlyconvinced that Martin's story was not only true, but a part of the wholesordid business whereby a husband was being bought for me. 

With this thought I went about all day, asking myself what I could doeven yet, but finding no answer until nine o'clock at night, when, immediately after supper (we lived country fashion), Aunt Bridget said:

"Now then, off to bed, girls. Everybody must be stirring early in themorning. "

And then I slipped upstairs to my room, and replied to Father Dan. 

Never had I written such a letter before. I poured my whole heart on tothe paper, saying what marriage meant to me, as the Pope himself hadexplained it, a sacrament implying and requiring love as the very soulof it, and since I did not feel this love for the man I was about tomarry, and had no grounds for thinking he felt it for me, and being surethat other reasons had operated to bring us together, I begged FatherDan, by his memory of my mother, and his affection for me, and hisdesire to see me good and happy, to intervene with my father and theBishop, even at this late hour, and at the church door itself to stopthe ceremony. 

It was late before I finished, and I thought the household was asleep, but just as I was coming to an end I heard my father moving in the roombelow, and then a sudden impulse came to me, and with a new thought Iwent downstairs and knocked at his door. 

"Who's there?" he cried. "Come in. "

He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, shaving before a looking-glasswhich was propped up against two ledgers. The lather on his upper lipgave his face a fierce if rather grotesque expression. 

"Oh, it's you, " he said. "Sit down. Got to do this to-night--goodnessknows if I'll have time for it in the morning. "

I took the seat in the ingle which Father Dan occupied on the night ofmy birth. The fire had nearly burnt out. 

"Thought you were in bed by this time. Guess I should have been in bedmyself but for this business. Look there"--he pointed with the handle ofhis razor to the table littered with papers--"that's a bit of what I'vehad to do for you. I kind o' think you ought to be grateful to yourfather, my gel. "

I told him he was very kind, and then, very nervously, said:

"But are you sure it's quite right, sir?"

Not catching my meaning he laughed. 

"Right?" he said, holding the point of his nose aside between the tipsof his left thumb and first finger. "Guess it's about as right as lawand wax can make it. "

"I don't mean that, sir. I mean. . . . "

"What?" he said, facing round. 

Then trembling and stammering I told him. I did not love Lord Raa. LordRaa did not love me. Therefore I begged him for my sake, for his sake, for everybody's sake (I think I said for my mother's sake also) topostpone our marriage. 

At first my father seemed unable to believe his own ears. 

"Postpone? Now? After all this money spent? And everything signed andsealed and witnessed!"

"Yes, if you please, sir, because. . . . "

I got no farther, for flinging down his razor my father rose in atowering rage. 

"Are you mad? Has somebody been putting the evil eye on you? Thegreatest match this island has ever seen, and you say postpone--put itoff, stop it, that's what you mean. Do you want to make a fool of a man?At the last moment, too. Just when there's nothing left but to go to theHigh Bailiff and the Church! . . . But I see--I see what it is. It'sthat young Conrad--he's been writing to you. "

I tried to say no, but my father bore me down. 

"Don't go to deny it, ma'am. He has been writing to every one--theBishop, Father Dan, myself even. Denouncing the marriage if you plaze. "

My father, in his great excitement, was breaking with withering scorninto his native speech. 

"Aw yes, though, denouncing and damning it, they're telling me! Mightyneighbourly of him, I'm sure! Just a neighbour lad without a penny athis back to take all that throuble! If I had known he felt like thatabout it I might have axed his consent! The imperence, though! Theimperence of sin! A father has no rights, it seems! A daughter is aseparate being, and all to that! Well, well! Amazing thick, isn't it?"

He was walking up and down the room with his heavy tread, making thefloor shake. 

"Then that woman in Rome--I wouldn't trust but she has been puttingnotions into your head, too. All the new-fangled fooleries, I'll gobail. Women and men equal, not a ha'p'orth of difference between them!The blatherskites!"

I was silenced, and I must have covered my face and cried, for after awhile my father softened, and touching my shoulder he asked me if a manof sixty-five was not likely to know better than a girl of nineteen whatwas good for her, and whether I supposed he had not satisfied himselfthat this marriage was a good thing for me and for him and foreverybody. 

"Do you think I'm not doing my best for you, gel--my very best?"

I must have made some kind of assent, for he said:

"Then don't moither me any more, and don't let your Aunt Bridget moitherme--telling me and telling me what I might have done for her owndaughter instead. "

At last, with a kind of rough tenderness, he took me by the arm andraised me to my feet. 

"There, there, go to bed and get some sleep. We'll have to start off forthe high Bailiff's early in the morning. "

My will was broken down. I could resist no longer. Without a word more Ileft him. 

Returning to my room I took the letter I had been writing to Father Danand tore it up piece by piece. As I did so I felt as if I were tearingup a living thing--something of myself, my heart and all that wascontained in it. 

Then I threw open the window and leant out. I could hear the murmur ofthe sea. I felt as if it were calling to me, though I could notinterpret its voice. The salt air was damp and it refreshed my eyelids. 

At length I got into bed, shivering with cold. When I had put out thelight I noticed that the moon, which was near the full, had a big yellowring of luminous vapour around it. 

THIRTIETH CHAPTER

My sleep that night was much troubled by dreams. It was the same dreamas before, again and again repeated--the dream of frozen regions and ofthe great ice barrier, and then of the broken pen. 

When I awoke in the hazy light of the dawn I thought of what the Popehad said about beginning my wedding-day with penance and communion, so Irose at once to go to church. 

The dawn was broadening, but the household was still asleep, only theservants in the kitchen stirring when I stepped through a side door, andset out across the fields. 

The dew was thick on the grass, and under the gloom of a heavy sky theday looked cold and cheerless. A wind from the south-east had risenduring the night, the sea was white with breakers, and from St. Mary'sRock there came the far-off moaning of surging waves. 

The church, too, when I reached it, looked empty and chill. Thesacristan in the dim choir was arranging lilies and marguerites aboutthe high altar, and only one poor woman, with a little red and blackshawl over her head and shoulders, was kneeling in the side chapel whereFather Dan was saying Mass, with a sleepy little boy in clogs to servehim. 

The woman was quite young, almost as young as myself, but she wasalready a widow, having lately lost her husband "at the herrings"somewhere up by Stornoway, where he had gone down in a gale, leaving herwith one child, a year old, and another soon to come. 

All this she told me the moment I knelt near her. The poor thing seemedto think I ought to have remembered her, for she had been at school withme in the village. 

"I'm Bella Quark that was, " she whispered. "I married Willie Shimmin ofthe Lhen, you recollect. It's only a month this morning since he waslost, but it seems like years and years. There isn't nothing in theworld like it. "

She knew about my marriage, and said she wished me joy, though the worldwas "so dark and lonely for some. " Then she said something about her"lil Willie. " She had left him asleep in her cottage on the Curragh, andhe might awake and cry before she got back, so she hoped Father Danwouldn't keep her long. 

I was so touched by the poor thing's trouble that I almost forgot myown, and creeping up to her side I put my arm through hers as we knelttogether, and that was how the Father found us when he turned to put theholy wafer on our tongues. 

The wind must have risen higher while I was in the church, for when Iwas returning across the fields it lashed my skirts about my legs sothat I could scarcely walk. A mist had come down and made a sort ofmonotonous movement in the mountains where they touched the vague lineof the heavy sky. 

I should be afraid to say that Nature was still trying to speak to me inher strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a flock ofyearlings, which had been sheltering under a hedge, followed me bleatingto the last fence, and that the moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rockwas the last sound I heard as I re-entered the house. 

Everything there was running like a mill-race by this time. The servantswere flying to and fro, my cousins were calling downstairs in accents ofalarm, Aunt Bridget was answering them in tones of vexation, and myfather was opening doors with a heavy push and closing them with aclash. 

They were all so suddenly pacified when I appeared that it flashed uponme at the moment that they must have thought I had run away. 

"Goodness gracious me, girl, where have you been?" said Aunt Bridget. 

I told her, and she was beginning to reproach me for not ordering roundthe carriage, instead of making my boots and stockings damp by traipsingacross the grass, when my father said:

"That'll do, that'll do! Change them and take a snack of something. Iguess we're due at Holmtown in half an hour. "

I ate my breakfast standing, the car was brought round, and by eighto'clock my father and I arrived at the house of the High Bailiff, whohad to perform the civil ceremony of my marriage according to theconditions required by law. 

The High Bailiff was on one knee before the fire in his office, holdinga newspaper in front of it to make it burn. 

"Nobody else here yet?" asked my father. 

"Traa dy liooar" (time enough), the High Bailiff muttered. 

He was an elderly man of intemperate habits who spent his nights at the"Crown and Mitre, " and was apparently out of humour at having beenbrought out of bed so early. 

His office was a room of his private house. It had a high desk, a stooland a revolving chair. Placards were pinned on the walls, one overanother, and a Testament, with the binding much worn, lay on a table. The place looked half like a doctor's consulting room, and half like asmall police court. 

Presently Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, came in, rather irritatinglycheerful in that chill atmosphere, and, half an hour late, my intendedhusband arrived, with his London lawyer and his friend Eastcliff. 

My mind was far from clear and I had a sense of seeing things by flashesonly, but I remember that I thought Lord Raa was very nervous, and iteven occurred to me that early as it was he had been drinking. 

"Beastly nuisance, isn't it?" he said to me aside, and then there wassomething about "this legal fuss and fuddlement. "

With the air of a man with a grievance the High Bailiff took a big bookout of the desk, and a smaller one off a shelf, and then we sat in ahalf circle, and the ceremony began. 

It was very brief and cold like a matter of business. As far as I canremember it consisted of two declarations which Lord Raa and I madefirst to the witnesses present and afterwards to each other. One of themstated that we knew of no lawful impediment why we should not be joinedtogether in matrimony, and the other declared that we were there andthen so joined. 

I remember that I repeated the words automatically, as the High Bailiffin his thick alcoholic voice read them out of the smaller of his books, and that Lord Raa, in tones of obvious impatience, did the same. 

Then the High Bailiff opened the bigger of his books, and after writingsomething in it himself he asked Lord Raa to sign his name, and thisbeing done he asked me also. 

"Am I to sign, too?" I asked, vacantly. 

"Well, who else do you think?" said Mr. Curphy with a laugh. "BetsyBeauty perhaps, eh?"

"Come, gel, come, " said my father, sharply, and then I signed. 

I had no longer any will of my own. In this as in everything I didwhatever was asked of me. 

It was all as dreary and lifeless as an empty house. I can remember thatit made no sensible impression upon my heart. My father gave some money(a few shillings I think) to the High Bailiff, who then tore a piece ofperforated blue paper out of the bigger of his books and offered it tome, saying:

"This belongs to you. "

"To me?" I said. 

"Who else?" said Mr. Curphy, who was laughing again, and then somethingwas said by somebody about marriage lines and no one knowing when a wisewoman might not want to use them. 

The civil ceremony of my marriage was now over, and Lord Raa, who hadbeen very restless, rose to his feet, saying:

"Beastly early drive. Anything in the house to steady one's nerves, HighBailiff?"

The High Bailiff made some reply, at which the men laughed, all exceptmy father. Then they left me and went into another room, thedining-room, and I heard the jingling of glasses and the drinking ofhealths while I sat before the fire with my foot on the fender and mymarriage lines in my hand. 

My brain was still numbed. I felt as one might feel if drowned in thesea and descending, without quite losing consciousness, to the depths ofits abyss. 

I remember I thought that what I had just gone through differed in norespect from the signing of my marriage settlement, except that in theone case I had given my husband rights over my money, my father's money, whereas in this case I seemed to have given him rights over myself. 

Otherwise it was all so cold, so drear, so dead, so unaffecting. 

The blue paper had slipped out of my hand on to the worn hearthrug whenmy helpless meditations were interrupted by the thrumming and throbbingof the motor-car outside, and by my father, who was at the office door, saying in his loud, commanding voice:

"Come, gel, guess it's time for you to be back. "

Half an hour afterwards I was in my own room at home, and given over tothe dressmakers. I was still being moved automatically--a creaturewithout strength or will. 

THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER

I have only an indefinite memory of floating vaguely through the sightsand sounds of the next two hours--of everybody except myself beingwildly excited; of my cousins railing repeatedly from unseen regions ofthe house: of Aunt Bridget scolding indiscriminately; of the dressmakerschattering without ceasing as they fitted on my wedding dress; of theirstanding off from me at intervals with cries of delight at the successof their efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of thechurch-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning ofthe sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubberwheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravelof the drive. 

When the dressmakers were done with me I was wearing an ivory satindress, embroidered in silver, with a coronal of myrtle and orangeblossoms under the old Limerick lace of the family veil, as well as astring of pearls and one big diamond of the noble house I was marryinginto. I remember they said my black hair shone with a blue lustreagainst the sparkling gem, and I dare say I looked gay on the outsideanyway. 

At last I heard a fluttering of silk outside my room, and a runningstream of chatter going down the stairs, followed by the banging ofcarriage doors, and then my father's deep voice, saying:

"Bride ready? Good! Time to go, I guess. "

He alone had made no effort to dress himself up, for he was stillwearing his every-day serge and his usual heavy boots. There was noteven a flower in his button-hole. 

We did not speak very much on our way to church, but I found a certaincomfort in his big warm presence as we sat together in the carriage withthe windows shut, for the rising storm was beginning to frighten me. 

"It will be nothing, " said my father. "Just a puff of wind and a slantof rain maybe. "

The little church was thronged with people. Even the galleries were fullof the children from the village school. There was a twittering overheadlike that of young birds in a tree, and as I walked up the nave on myfather's arm I could not help but hear over the sound of the organ thewhispered words of the people in the pews on either side of us. 

"Dear heart alive, the straight like her mother she is, bless her!"

"Goodness yes, it's the poor misfortunate mother come to life again. "

"Deed, but the daughter's in luck, though. "

Lord Raa was waiting for me by the communion rail. He looked yet morenervous than in the morning, and, though he was trying to bear himselfwith his usual composure, there was (or I thought there was) a certainexpression of fear in his face which I had never seen before. 

His friend and witness, Mr. Eastcliff, wearing a carnation button-hole, was by his side, and his aunt, Lady Margaret, carrying a sheaf ofbeautiful white flowers, was standing near. 

My own witnesses and bridesmaids, Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, inlarge hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind me. I could hearthe rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the indistinct buzz oftheir whispered conversation, as well as the more audible reproofs ofAunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk dress and a bonnet like a halfmoon, was telling them to be silent and to look placid. 

At the next moment I was conscious that a bell had been rung in thechancel; that the organ had stopped; that the coughing and hemming inthe church had ceased; that somebody was saying "Stand here, my lord";that Lord Raa, with a nervous laugh, was asking "Here?" and taking aplace by my side; that the lighted altar, laden with flowers, was infront of me; and that the Bishop in his vestments, Father Dan in hissurplice and white stole, and a clerk carrying a book and a vessel ofholy water were beginning the service. 

Surely never was there a sadder ceremony. Never did any girl undersimilar circumstances feel a more vivid presentiment of the pains andpenalties that follow on a forced and ill-assorted marriage. And yetthere came to me in the course of the service such a startling change ofthought as wiped out for a while all my sadness, made me forget thecompulsion that had been put upon me, and lifted me into a realm ofspiritual ecstasy. 

The Bishop began with a short litany which asked God's blessing on theceremony which was to join together two of His children in the bonds ofholy wedlock. While that was going on I was conscious of nothing exceptthe howling of the wind about the church windows and the far-off tollingof the bell on St. Mary's Rock--nothing but this and a voice within mewhich seemed to say again and again, "I don't love him! I don't lovehim!"

But hardly had the actual ceremony commenced when I began to be overawedby the solemnity and divine power of the service, and by the sense ofGod leaning over my littleness and guiding me according to His will. 

What did it matter how unworthy were the preparations that had led upto this marriage if God was making it? God makes all marriages that areblessed by His Church, and therefore He overrules to His own good endsall human impulses, however sordid or selfish they may be. 

After that thought came to me nothing else seemed to matter, andnothing, however jarring or incongruous, was able to lower theexaltation of my spirit. 

But the service, which had this effect upon me, appeared to have anexactly opposite effect on Lord Raa. His nervousness increased visibly, though he did his best to conceal it by a lightness of manner thatsometimes looked like derision. 

Thus when the Bishop stepped down to us and said:

"James Charles Munster, wilt thou take Mary here present for thy lawfulwife, according to the rite of our holy Mother the Church, " my husbandhalted and stammered over his answer, saying beneath his breath, "Ithought I was a heretic. "

But when the corresponding question was put to me, and Father Danthinking I must be nervous, leaned over me and whispered, "Don't worry, child, take your time, " I replied a loud, clear, unfaltering voice:

"I will. "

And again, when my husband had to put the ring and the gold and silveron the salver (he fumbled and dropped them as he did so, and fumbled anddropped them a second time when he had to take them up after they hadbeen blessed, laughing too audibly at his own awkwardness), and thenrepeat after the Bishop:

"With this ring I thee wed; this gold and silver I thee give; with mybody I thee worship; and with all my worldly goods I thee endow, " hetendered the ring slowly and with an obvious effort. 

But I took it without trembling, because I was thinking that, in spiteof all I had heard of his ways of life, this solemn and sacred sacramentmade him mine and no one else's. 

It is all very mysterious; I cannot account for it; I only know it wasso, and that, everything considered, it was perhaps the strangest factof all my life. 

I remember that more than once during the ceremony Father Dan spoke tome softly and caressingly, as if to a child, but I felt no need of hiscomforting, for my strength was from a higher source. 

I also remember that it was afterwards said that all through theceremony the eyes of the newly-wedded couple seemed sedulously to shuneach other, but if I did not look at my husband it was because mymarriage was like a prayer to me, carrying me back, with its sense ofpurity and sanctity, to the little sunlit church in Rome where MildredBankes had taken her vows. 

After the marriage service there was Nuptial Mass and Benediction(special dispensation from Rome), and that raised to a still higherpitch the spiritual exaltation which sustained me. 

Father Dan read the Epistle beginning "Let wives be subject to theirhusbands, " and then the Bishop read the Gospel, concluding, "Thereforenow they are not two, but one flesh: what therefore God hath joinedtogether, let not man put asunder. "

I had trembled when I thought of these solemn and sonorous words in thesolitude of my own room, but now that they were spoken before thecongregation I had no fear, no misgiving, nothing but a sense of raptureand consecration. 

The last words being spoken and Lord Raa and I being man and wife, westepped into the sacristy to sign the register, and not even there didmy spirit fail me. I took up the pen and signed my name without atremor. But hardly had I done so when I heard a rumbling murmur ofvoices about me--first the Bishop's voice (in such a worldly tone) andthen my father's and then my husband's, and then the voices of manyothers, in light conversation mingled with trills of laughter. And then, in a moment, in a twinkling, as fast as a snowflake melts upon a stream, the spell of the marriage service seemed to break. 

I have heard since that my eyes were wet at that moment and I seemed tohave been crying all through the ceremony. I know nothing about that, but I do know that I felt a kind of internal shudder and that it wasjust as if my soul had suddenly awakened from an intoxicating drug. 

The organ began to play the Wedding March, and my husband, putting myarm through his, said, "Come. "

There was much audible whispering among the people waiting for us in thechurch, and as we walked towards the door I saw ghostly faces smiling atme on every side, and heard ghostly voices speaking in whispers thatwere like the backward plash of wavelets on the shore. 

"Sakes alive, how white's she's looking, though, " said somebody, andthen somebody else said--I could not help but hear it--

"Dear heart knows if her father has done right for all that. "

I did not look at anybody, but I saw Martin's mother at the back, andshe was wiping her eyes and saying to some one by her side--it must havebeen the doctor--

"God bless her for the sweet child veen she always was, anyway. "

The storm had increased during the service; and the sacristan, who wasopening the door for us, had as much as he could do to hold it againstthe wind, which came with such a rush upon us when we stepped into theporch that my veil and the coronal of myrtle and orange blossoms weretorn off my head and blown back into the church. 

"God bless my sowl, " said somebody--it was Tommy's friend, JohnnyChristopher--"there's some ones would he calling that bad luck, though. "

A band of village musicians, who were ranged up in the road, struck up"The Black and Grey" as we stepped out of the churchyard, and the nextthing I knew was that my husband and I were in the carriage going home. 

He had so far recovered from the frightening effects of the marriageservice that he was making light of it, and saying:

"When will this mummery come to an end, I wonder?"

The windows of the carriage were rattling with the wind, and my husbandhad begun to talk of the storm when we came upon the trunk of a youngtree which had been torn up by the roots and was lying across the road, so that our coachman had to get down and remove it. 

"Beastly bad crossing, I'm afraid. Hope you're a good sailor. Must be inLondon to-morrow morning, you know. "

The band was playing behind us. The leafless trees were beating theirbare boughs in front. The wedding bells were pealing. The storm wasthundering through the running sky. The sea was very loud. 

At my father's gate Tommy the Mate, with a serious face, was standing, cap in hand, under his triumphal arch, which (as well as it could forthe wind that was tearing its flowers and scattering them on the ground)spelled out the words "God bless the Happy Bride. "

When we reached the open door of the house a group of maids werewaiting for us. They were holding on to their white caps and trying tocontrol their aprons, which were swirling about their black frocks. As Istepped out of the carriage they addressed me as "My lady" and "Yourladyship. " The seagulls, driven up from the sea, were screaming aboutthe house. 

My husband and I went into the drawing-room, and as we stood together onthe hearthrug I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass over themantelpiece. It was deadly white, and had big staring eyes and a look offaded sunshine. I fixed afresh the pearls about my neck and the diamondin my hair, which was much disordered. 

Almost immediately the other carriages returned, and relatives andguests began to pour into the room and offer us their congratulations. First came my cousins, who were too much troubled about their ownbedraggled appearance to pay much attention to mine. Then Aunt Bridget, holding on to her half-moon bonnet and crying:

"You happy, happy child! But what a wind! There's been nothing like itsince the day you were born. "

My father came next, like a gale of wind himself, saying:

"I'm proud of you, gel. Right proud I am. You done well. "

Then came Lady Margaret, who kissed me without saying many words, andfinally a large and varied company of gaily-dressed friends andneighbours, chiefly the "aristocracy" of our island, who lavished manyunnecessary "ladyships" upon me, as if the great name reflected acertain glory upon themselves. 

I remember that as I stood on the hearthrug with my husband, receivingtheir rather crude compliments, a vague gaiety came over me, and Ismiled and laughed, although my heart was growing sick, for the effectof the wedding-service was ebbing away into a cold darkness like that ofa night tide when the moonlight has left it. 

It did not comfort me that my husband, without failing in good manners, was taking the whole scene and company with a certain scarcely-veiledcontempt which I could not help but see. 

And neither did it allay my uneasiness to glance at my father, where hestood at the end of the room, watching, with a look of triumph in hisglistening black eyes, his proud guests coming up to me one by one, andseeming to say to himself, "They're here at last! I've bet them! Yes, by gough, I've bet them!"

Many a time since I have wondered if his conscience did not stir withinhim as he looked across at his daughter in the jewels of the noble househe had married her into--the pale bride with the bridegroom he hadbought for her--and thought of the mockery of a sacred union which hehad brought about to gratify his pride, his vanity, perhaps his revenge. 

But it was all over now. I was married to Lord Raa. In the eyes equallyof the law, the world and the Church, the knot between us wasirrevocably tied. 

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

I am no mystic and no spiritualist, and I only mention it as one of themysteries of human sympathy between far-distant friends, that during apart of the time when my dear one was going through the fierce struggleshe describes, and was dreaming of frozen regions and a broken pen, theship I sailed on had got itself stuck fast in a field of pack ice inlatitude 76, under the ice barrier by Charcot Bay, and that while wewere lying like helpless logs, cut off from communication with theworld, unable to do anything but groan and swear and kick our heels inour bunks at every fresh grinding of our crunching sides, my own mind, sleeping and waking, was for ever swinging back, with a sort of yearningprayer to my darling not to yield to the pressure which I felt sodamnably sure was being brought to bear on her. 

 M. C. 

THIRD PART

MY HONEYMOON

THIRTY-SECOND CHAPTER

When the Bishop and Father Dan arrived, the bell was rung and we went into breakfast. 

We breakfasted in the new dining-room, which was now finished and beingused for the first time. 

It was a gorgeous chamber beblazoned with large candelabra, hugemirrors, and pictures in gold frames--resembling the room it wasintended to imitate, yet not resembling it, as a woman over-dressedresembles a well-dressed woman. 

My father sat at the head of his table with the Bishop, Lady Margaretand Aunt Bridget on his right, and myself, my husband, Betsy Beauty andMr. Eastcliff on his left. The lawyers and the trustee were midway down, Father Dan with Nessy MacLeod was at the end, and a large company of ourfriends and neighbours, wearing highly-coloured flowers on their breastsand in their buttonholes, sat between. 

The meal was very long, and much of the food was very large--large fish, large roasts of venison, veal, beef and mutton, large puddings and largecheeses, all cut on the table and served by waiters from Blackwater. There were two long black lines of them--a waiter behind the chair ofnearly every other guest. 

All through the breakfast the storm raged outside. More than once itdrowned the voices of the people at the table, roaring like a wild beastin the great throat of the wide chimney, swirling about the lanternlight, licking and lashing and leaping at the outsides of the walls likelofty waves breaking against a breakwater, and sending up a thunderousnoise from the sea itself, where the big bell of St. Mary's Rock wasstill tolling like a knell. 

Somebody--it must have been Aunt Bridget again--said there had beennothing like it since the day of my birth, and it must be "fate. "

"Chut, woman!" said my father. "We're living in the twentieth century. Who's houlding with such ould wife's wonders now?"

He was intensely excited, and, his excitement betrayed itself, as usual, in reversion to his native speech. Sometimes he surveyed in silence, with the old masterful lift of his eyebrows, his magnificent room andthe great guests who were gathered within it; sometimes he whispered tothe waiters to be smarter with the serving of the dishes; and sometimeshe pitched his voice above the noises within and without and shouted, incountry-fashion, to his friends at various points of the table to knowhow they were faring. 

"How are you doing, Mr. Curphy, sir?"

"Doing well, sir. Are you doing well yourself, Mr. O'Neill, sir?"

"Lord-a-massy yes, sir. I'm always doing well, sir. "

Never had anybody in Ellan seen so strange a mixture of grandeur andcountry style. My husband seemed to be divided between amused contemptfor it, and a sense of being compromised by its pretence. More than onceI saw him, with his monocle in his eye, look round at his friendEastcliff, but he helped himself frequently from a large decanter ofbrandy and drank healths with everybody. 

There were the usual marriage pleasantries, facetious compliments andchaff, in which to my surprise (the solemnity of the service being stillupon me) the Bishop permitted himself to join. 

I was now very nervous, and yet I kept up a forced gaiety, though myheart was cold and sick. I remember that I had a preternatural power ofhearing at the same time nearly every conversation that was going on atthe table, and that I joined in nearly all the laughter. 

At a more than usually loud burst of wind somebody said it would be amercy if the storm did not lift the roof off. 

"Chut, man!" cried my father. "Solid oak and wrought iron here. None ofyour mouldy old monuments that have enough to do to keep their tileson. "

"Then nobody, " said my husband with a glance at his friend, "need beafraid of losing his head in your house, sir?"

"Not if he's got one to come in with, sir. "

Betsy Beauty, sitting next to Mr. Eastcliff, was wondering if he woulddo us the honour to visit the island oftener now that his friend hadmarried into it. 

"But, my dear Betsy, " said my husband, "who would live in thisGod-forsaken place if he could help it?"

"God-forsaken, is it?" said my father. "Maybe so, sir--but that's whatthe cuckoo said after he had eaten the eggs out of the thrush's nest andleft a mess in it. "

Aunt Bridget was talking in doleful tones to Lady Margaret about mymother, saying she had promised her on her death-bed to take care of herchild and had been as good as her word, always putting me before her owndaughter, although her ladyship would admit that Betsy was a handsomegirl, and, now that his lordship was married, there were few in theisland that were fit for her. 

"Why no, Mrs. MacLeod, " said my husband, after another significantglance at his friend, "I dare say you've not got many who can makeenough to keep a carriage?"

"Truth enough, sir, " said my father. "We've got hundreds and tons thatcan make debts though. "

The breakfast came to an end at length, and almost before the last ofthe waiters had left the room my father rose to speak. 

"Friends all, " he said, "the young married couple have to leave us forthe afternoon steamer. "

"In this weather?" said somebody, pointing up to the lantern lightthrough which the sky was now darkening. 

"Chut! A puff of wind and a slant of rain, as I've been saying to my gelhere. But my son-in-law, Lord Raa, " (loud cheers followed thisdescription, with some laughter and much hammering on the table), "myson-in-law says he has to be in London to-morrow, and this morning mydaughter has sworn obedience. . . . What's that, Monsignor? Notobedience exactly? Something like it then, so she's bound to go alongwith him. So fill up your glasses to the brim and drink to the bride andbridegroom. "

As soon as the noise made by the passing of decanters had died down myfather spoke again. 

"This is the proudest day of my life. It's the day I've worked for andslaved for and saved for, and it's come to pass at last. "

There was another chorus of applause. 

"What's that you were saying in church, Mr. Curphy, sir? Time brings inits revenges? It does too. Look at me. "

My father put his thumbs in the arm-pits of his waistcoat. 

"You all know what I am, and where I come from. "

My husband put his monocle to his eye and looked up. 

"I come from a mud cabin on the Curragh, not a hundred miles from here. My father was kill . . . But never mind about that now. When he left usit was middling hard collar work, I can tell you--what with me workingthe bit of a croft and the mother weeding for some of you--some of yourfathers I mane--ninepence a day dry days, and sixpence all weathers. When I was a lump of a lad I was sworn at in the high road by agentleman driving in his grand carriage, and the mother was lashed byhis . . . But never mind about that neither. I guess I've hustled roundconsiderable since then, and this morning I've married my daughter intothe first family in the island. "

There was another burst of cheering at this, but it was almost drownedby the loud rattling of the rain which was now falling on the lanternlight. 

"Monsignor, " cried my father, pitching his voice still higher, "what'sthat you were saying in Rome about the mills of God?"

Fumbling his jewelled cross and smiling blandly the Bishop gave myfather the familiar quotation. 

"Truth enough, too. The mills of God grind slowly but they're grindingexceeding small. Nineteen years ago I thought I was as sure of what Iwanted as when I got out of bed this morning. If my gel here had beenborn a boy, my son would have sat where his lordship is now sitting. Butall's well that ends well! If I haven't got a son I've got a son-in-law, and when I get a grandson he'll be the richest man that ever steppedinto Castle Raa, and the uncrowned king of Ellan. "

At that there was a tempest of cheers, which, mingling with the clamourof the storm, made a deafening tumult. 

"They're saying a dale nowadays about fathers and children--daughtersbeing separate beings, and all to that. But show me the daughter thatcould do better for herself than my gel's father has done for her. Shehas a big fortune, and her husband has a big name, and what more do theywant in this world anyway?"

"Nothing at all, " came from various parts of the room. 

"Neighbours, " said my father, looking round him with a satisfied smile, "I'm laying you dry as herrings in a hould, but before I call on you todrink this toast I'll ask the Bishop to spake to you. He's a grand manis the Bishop, and in fixing up this marriage I don't in the world knowwhat I could have done without him. "

The Bishop, still fingering his jewelled cross and smiling, spoke in hisusual suave voice. He firmly believed that the Church had that morningblessed a most propitious and happy union. Something might be saidagainst mixed marriages, but under proper circumstances the Church hadnever forbidden them and his lordship (this with a deep bow to myhusband) had behaved with great liberality of mind. 

As for what their genial and rugged host had said of certain foolish anddangerous notions about the relations of father and child, he wasreminded that there were still more foolish and dangerous ones about therelations of husband and wife. 

From the earliest ages of the Church, however, those relations had beenexactly defined. "Let wives be subject to their husbands, " said theEpistle we had read this morning, and no less conclusive had been ourclosing prayer, asking that the wife keep true faith with her husband, being lovely in his eyes even as was Rachel, wise as was Rebecca, anddutiful as was Sara. 

"Beautiful!" whispered Aunt Bridget to Lady Margaret. "It's what Ialways was myself in the days of the dear Colonel. "

"And now, " said the Bishop, "before you drink this toast and call uponthe noble bridegroom to respond to it, " (another deep bow to myhusband), "I will ask for a few words from the two legal gentlemen whohave carried out the admirably judicious financial arrangements withoutwhich this happy marriage would have been difficult if not impossible. "

Then my husband's lawyer, with a supercilious smile on his clean-shavenface, said it had been an honour to him to assist in preparing the wayfor the "uncrowned king of Ellan. " ("It _has_, sir, " cried my father ina loud voice which straightened the gentleman's face instantly); andfinally Mr. Curphy, speaking through his long beard, congratulated myfather and my husband equally on the marriage, and gave it as hisopinion that there could be no better use for wealth than to come to therescue of an historic family which had fallen on evil times and onlyrequired a little money to set it on its feet again. 

"The bride and bridegroom!" cried my father; and then everybody rose andthere was much cheering, with cries of "His lordship, " "His lordship. "

All through the speech-making my husband had rolled uneasily in hischair. He had also helped himself frequently from the decanter, so thatwhen he got up to reply he was scarcely sober. 

In his drawling voice he thanked the Bishop, and said that having madeup his mind to the marriage he had never dreamt of raising difficultiesabout religion. As to the modern notions about the relations of husbandand wife, he did not think a girl brought up in a convent would give himmuch trouble on that subject. 

"Not likely, " cried my father. "I'll clear her of that anyway. "

"So I thank you for myself and for my family, " continued my husband, "and . . . Oh, yes, of course, " (this to Lady Margaret). "I thank youfor my wife also, and . . . And that's all. "

I felt sick and cold and ashamed. A rush of blood came under the skin ofmy face that must have made me red to the roots of my hair. 

In all this speaking about my marriage there had not been one word aboutmyself--myself really, a living soul with all her future happiness atstake. I cannot say what vague impulse took possession of me, but Iremember that when my husband sat down I made a forced laugh, though Iknew well that I wanted to cry. 

In an agony of shame I was beginning to feel a wild desire to escapefrom the room and even from the house, that I might breathe in some ofthe free wind outside, when all at once I became aware that somebodyelse was speaking. 

It was Father Dan. He had risen unannounced from his seat at the end ofthe table. I saw his sack coat which was much worn at the seams; I sawhis round face which was flushed; I heard the vibrating note in his softIrish voice which told me he was deeply moved; and then I dropped myhead, for I knew what was coming. 

THIRTY-THIRD CHAPTER

"Mr. O'Neill, " said Father Dan, "may your parish priest take the libertyof speaking without being spoken to?"

My father made some response, and then a hush fell over the dining-room. Either the storm ceased for a time, or in my great agitation it seemedto do so, for I did not hear it. 

"We have heard a great deal about the marriage we have celebratedto-day, but have we not forgotten something? What _is_ marriage? Is itthe execution of a contract? Is it the signing of a register? Is it eventhe taking of an oath before an altar? No. Marriage is the sacredcovenant which two souls make with each other, the woman with the man, the man with the woman, when she chooses him from all other men, when hechooses her from all other women, to belong to each other for ever, sothat no misfortune, no storm of life, no sin on either side shall everput them apart. That's what marriage is, and all we have been doingto-day is to call on God and man to bear witness to that holy bond. "

My heart was beating high. I raised my head, and I think my eyes musthave been shining. I looked across at the Bishop. His face was showingsigns of vexation. 

"Mr. O'Neill, sir, " cried Father Dan, raising his trembling voice, "yousay your daughter has a big fortune and her husband has a big name, andwhat more do they want in this world? I'll tell you what they want, sir. They want love, love on both sides, if they are to be good and happy, and if they've got that they've got something which neither wealth norrank can buy. "

I had dropped my head again, but under my eyelashes I could see that thecompany were sitting spell-bound. Only my husband was shuffling in hisseat, and the Bishop was plucking at his gold chain. 

"My Bishop, " said Father Dan, "has told us of the submission a wife owesto her husband, and of her duty to be lovely and wise and faithful inhis eyes. But isn't it the answering thought that the husband on hispart owes something to the wife? Aren't we told that he shall put awayeverything and everybody for her sake, and cleave to her and cling toher and they shall be one flesh? Isn't that, too, a divine commandment?"

My heart was throbbing so loud by this time that the next words werelost to me. When I came to myself again Father Dan was saying:

"Think what marriage means to a woman--a young girl especially. It meansthe breaking of old ties, the beginning of a new life, the setting outinto an unknown world on a voyage from which there can be no return. Inher weakness and her helplessness she leaves one dependency for another, the shelter of a father for the shelter of a husband. What does shebring to the man she marries? Herself, everything she is, everythingshe can be, to be made or marred by him, and never, never, never to bethe same to any other man whatsoever as long as life shall last. "

More than ever now, but for other reasons, I wanted to fly from theroom. 

"Friends, " cried Father Dan, "we don't know much of the bridegroom inthis parish, but we know the bride. We've known her all her life. Weknow what she is. I do, anyway. If you are her father, Mr. O'Neill, sir, I am her father also. I was in this house when she was born. I baptizedher. I took her out of the arms of the angel who bore her. So she's mychild too, God bless her. . . . "

His voice was breaking--I was sobbing--though he was speaking so loudlyI could scarcely hear him--I could scarcely see him--I only knew that hewas facing about in our direction and raising his trembling hand to myhusband. 

"She is my child, too, I say, and now that she is leaving us, now thatyou are taking her away from us, I charge you, my lord, to be good andfaithful to her, as you will have to answer for her soul some day. "

What else he said I do not know. From that moment I was blind and deafto everything. Nevertheless I was conscious that after Father Dan hadceased to speak there was a painful silence. I thought the companyseemed to be startled and even a little annoyed by the emotion sosuddenly shot into their midst. The Bishop looked vexed, my fatherlooked uncomfortable, and my husband, who had been drinking glass afterglass of brandy, was muttering something about "a sermon. "

It had been intended that Mr. Eastcliff should speak for thebridesmaids, and I was afterwards told by Betsy Beauty that he hadprepared himself with many clever epigrams, but everybody felt therecould be no more speaking of any kind now. After a few awkward momentsmy father looked at his watch and said it was about time for us to startif we were to catch the steamer, so I was hurried upstairs to change forour journey. 

When I came down again, in my tailor-made travelling dress with sables, the whole company was in the hall and everybody seemed to be talking atthe same time, making a noise like water in a weir. 

I was taken possession of by each in turn. Nessy MacLeod told me in anaside what an excellent father I had. Betsy Beauty whispered that Mr. Eastcliff was so handsome and their tastes were so similar that shehoped I would invite him to Castle Raa as soon as I came back. AuntBridget, surrounded by a group of sympathising ladies (including LadyMargaret, who was making an obvious effort to be gracious) was wipingher eyes and saying I had always been her favourite and she hadfaithfully done her duty by me. 

"Mary, my love, " she said, catching my eye, "I'm just telling herladyship I don't know in the world what I'll do when you are gone. "

My husband was there too, wearing a heavy overcoat with the collar up, and receiving from a group of insular gentlemen their cheerfulprognostics of a bad passage. 

"'Deed, but I'm fearing it will be a dirty passage, my lord. "

"Chut!" said my father. "The wind's from the south-west. They'll soonget shelter. "

The first of our two cars came round and my husband's valet went off inadvance with our luggage. Then the second car arrived, and the time camefor our departure. I think I kissed everybody. Everybody seemed to becrying--everybody except myself, for my tears were all gone by thistime. 

Just as we were about to start, the storm, which must certainly havefallen for a while, sprang up suddenly, and when Tommy the Mate (barelyrecognisable in borrowed black garments) opened the door the wind camerushing into the house with a long-drawn whirr. 

I had said good-bye to the old man, and was stepping into the porch whenI remembered Father Dan. He was standing in his shabby sack coat with asorrowful face in a dark corner by the door, as if he had placed himselfthere to see the last of me. I wanted to put my arms around his neck, but I knew that would be wrong, so I dropped to my knees and kissed hishand and he gave me his blessing. 

My husband, who was waiting by the side of the throbbing automobile, said impatiently:

"Come, come, dear, don't keep me in the rain. "

I got into the landaulette, my husband got in after me, the car began tomove, there were cries from within the house ("Good-bye!" "Good luck")which sounded like stifled shrieks as they were carried off by the windwithout, and then we were under weigh. 

As we turned the corner of the drive something prompted me to look backat my mother's window--with its memories of my first going to school. 

At the next moment we were crossing the bridge--with its memories ofMartin Conrad and William Rufus. 

At the next we were on the road. 

THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

"Thank God, that's over, " said my husband. Then, half apologetically, headded: "You didn't seem to enjoy it any more than myself, my dear. "

At the entrance to our village a number of men stood firing guns; in themiddle a group of girls were stretching a rope across the road; a numberof small flags, torn by the wind and wet with the rain, were rattling onflagstaffs hung out from some of the window sills; a few women, withshawls over their heads, were sheltering on the weather side of theirporches to see us pass. 

My husband was impatient of our simple island customs. Once or twice helowered the window of the car, threw out a handful of silver and at thesame time urged the chauffeur to drive quicker. As soon as we were clearof the village he fell back in his seat, saying:

"Heavens, how sleepy I am! No wonder either! Late going to bed lastnight and up so early this morning. "

After a moment he began to yawn, and almost before he could have beenaware of it he had closed his eyes. At the next moment he was asleep. 

It was a painful, almost a hideous sleep. His cheeks swelled and sank;his lips parted, he was breathing heavily, and sometimes gaping like acarp out of water. 

I could not detach my eyes from his face, which, without eyes to relieveit, seemed to be almost repulsive now. It would be difficult to describemy sensations. I felt dreadfully humiliated. Even my personal pride waswounded. I remembered what Father Dan had said about husband and wifebeing one flesh, and told myself that _this_ was what I belonged to, what belonged to me--_this!_ Then I tried to reproach and reprovemyself, but in order to do so I had to turn my eyes away. 

Our road to Blackwater lay over the ridge of a hill much exposed to thewind from the south-west. When we reached this point the clouds seemedto roll up from the sea like tempestuous battalions. Torrential rainfell on the car and came dripping in from the juncture of thelandaulette roof. Some of it fell on the sleeper and he awoke with astart. 

"Damn--"

He stopped, as if, caught in guilt, and began to apologise again. 

"Was I asleep? I really think I must have been. Stupid, isn't it? Excuseme. "

He blinked his eyes as if to empty them of sleep, looked me over for amoment or two in silence, and then said with a smile which made meshudder:

"So you and I are man and wife, my dear!"

I made no answer, and, still looking fixedly at me, he said:

"Well, worse things might have happened after all--what do _you_ think?"

Still I did not answer him, feeling a certain shame, not to say disgust. Then he began to pay me some compliments on my appearance. 

"Do you know you're charming, my dear, really charming!"

That stung me, and made me shudder, I don't know why, unless it wasbecause the words gave me the sense of having been used before to otherwomen. I turned my eyes away again. 

"Don't turn away, dear. Let me see those big black eyes of yours. Iadore black eyes. They always pierce me like a gimlet. "

He reached forward as he spoke and drew me to him. I felt frightened andpushed him off. 

"What's this?" he said, as if surprised. 

But after another moment he laughed, and in the tone of a man who hadhad much to do with women and thought he knew how to deal with them, hesaid:

"Wants to be coaxed, does she? They all do, bless them!"

Saying this he pulled me closer to him, putting his arm about my waist, but once more I drew and forcibly pushed him from me. 

His face darkened for an instant, and then cleared again. 

"Oh, I see, " he said. "Offended, is she? Paying me out for having paidso little court to her? Well, she's right there too, bless her! Butnever mind! You're a decidedly good-looking little woman, my dear, andif I have neglected you thus far, I intend to make up for it during thehoneymoon. So come, little gal, let's be friends. "

Taking hold of me again, he tried to kiss me, putting at the same timehis hand on the bosom of my dress, but I twisted my face aside andprevented him. 

"Oh! Oh! Hurt her modesty, have I?" he said, laughing like a man who wasquite sure both of himself and of me. "But my little nun will get overthat by and by. Wait awhile! Wait awhile!"

By this time I was trembling with the shock of a terror that wasentirely new to me. I could not explain to myself the nature of it, butit was there, and I could not escape from it. 

Hitherto, when I had thought of my marriage to Lord Raa I had beentroubled by the absence of love between us; and what I meant to myselfby love--the love of husband and wife--was the kind of feeling I had forthe Reverend Mother, heightened and deepened and spiritualised, as Ibelieved, by the fact (with all its mysterious significance) that theone was a man and the other a woman. 

But this was something quite different. Not having found in marriagewhat I had expected, I was finding something else, for there could be nomistaking my husband's meaning when he looked at me with his passionateeyes and said, "Wait awhile!"

I saw what was before me, and in fear of it I found myself wishing thatsomething might happen to save me. I was so frightened that if I couldhave escaped from the car I should have done so. The only thing I couldhope for was that we should arrive at Blackwater too late for thesteamer, or that the storm would prevent it from sailing. What relieffrom my situation I should find in that, beyond the delay of one day, one night (in which I imagined I might be allowed to return home), I didnot know. But none the less on that account I began to watch the cloudswith a feverish interest. 

They were wilder than ever now--rolling up from the south-west in hugeblack whorls which enveloped the mountains and engulfed the valleys. Thewind, too, was howling at intervals like a beast being slaughtered. Itwas terrible, but not so terrible as the thing I was thinking of. I wasafraid of the storm, and yet I was fearfully, frightfully glad of it. 

My husband, who, after my repulse, had dropped back into his own cornerof the car, was very angry. He talked again of our "God-forsakenisland, " and the folly of living in it, said our passage would be a longone in any case, and we might lose our connection to London. 

"Damnably inconvenient if we do. I've special reasons for being there inthe morning, " he said. 

At a sharp turn of the road the wind smote the car as with an invisiblewing. One of the windows was blown in, and to prevent the rain fromdriving on to us my husband had to hold up a cushion in the gap. 

This occupied him until we ran into Blackwater, and then he dropped thecushion and put his head out, although the rain was falling heavily, tocatch the first glimpse of the water in the bay. 

It was in terrific turmoil. My heart leapt up at the sight of it. Myhusband swore. 

We drew up on the drenched and naked pier. My husband's valet, inwaterproofs, came to the sheltered side of the car, and, shouting abovethe noises of the wind in the rigging of the steamer, he said:

"Captain will not sail to-day, my lord. Inshore wind. Says he couldn'tget safely out of the harbour. "

My husband swore violently. I was unused to oaths at that time and theycut me like whipcord, but all the same my pulse was bounding joyfully. 

"Bad luck, my lord, but only one thing to do now, " shouted the valet. 

"What's that?" said my husband, growling. 

"Sleep in Blackwater to-night, in hopes of weather mending in themorning. "

Anticipating this course, he had already engaged rooms for us at the"Fort George. "

My heart fell, and I waited for my husband's answer. I was stifling. 

"All right, Hobson. If it must be, it must, " he answered. 

I wanted to speak, but I did not know what to say. There seemed to benothing that I could say. 

A quarter of an hour afterwards we arrived at the hotel, where theproprietor, attended by the manageress and the waiters, received us withrather familiar smiles. 

THIRTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

When I began to write I determined to tell the truth and the wholetruth. But now I find that the whole truth will require that I shouldinvade some of the most sacred intimacies of human experience. At thismoment I feel as if I were on the threshold of one of the sanctuariesof a woman's life, and I ask myself if it is necessary and inevitablethat I should enter it. 

I have concluded that it _is_ necessary and inevitable--necessary to thesequence of my narrative, inevitable for the motive with which I amwriting it. 

Four times already I have written what is to follow. In the first case Ifound that I had said too much. In the second I had said too little. Inthe third I was startled and shocked by the portrait I had presented ofmyself and could not believe it to be true. In the fourth I saw with athrill of the heart that the portrait was not only true, but too true. Let me try again. 

I entered our rooms at the hotel, my husband's room and mine, with asense of fear, almost of shame. My sensations at that moment had nothingin common with the warm flood of feeling which comes to a woman when shefinds herself alone for the first time with the man she loves, in alittle room which holds everything that is of any account to her in theworld. They were rather those of a young girl who, walking with a candlethrough the dark corridors of an empty house at night, is suddenlyconfronted by a strange face. I was the young girl with the candle; thestrange face was my husband's. 

We had three rooms, all communicating, a sitting-room in the middle withbedrooms right and left. The bedroom on the right was large and itcontained a huge bed with a covered top and tail-boards. That on theleft was small, and it had a plain brass and iron bedstead, which hadevidently been meant for a lady's maid. I had no maid yet. It wasintended that I should engage a French one in London. 

Almost immediately on entering the sitting-room my husband, who had notyet recovered from his disappointment, left me to go downstairs, sayingwith something like a growl that he had telegrams to send to London andinstructions to give to his man Hobson. 

Without taking off my outer things I stepped up to the windows, whichwere encrusted with salt from the flying spray. The hotel stood on arocky ledge above the harbour, and the sound of the sea, beating on theouter side of the pier, came up with a deafening roar. The red-funnelledsteamer we should have sailed by lay on the pier's sheltered side, letting down steam, swaying to her creaking hawsers, and heaving to thefoam that was surging against her bow. 

I was so nervous, so flurried, so preoccupied by vague fears that Ihardly saw or heard anything. Porters came up with our trunks and askedme where they were to place them, but I scarcely know how I answeredthem, although I was aware that everything--both my husband's luggageand mine--was being taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if sheought to put a light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . No . . . Yes, "and presently I heard the fire crackling. 

After awhile my husband came back in a better temper and said:

"Confounded nuisance, but I suppose we must make the best of it. "

He laughed as he said this, and coming closer and looking me over with asmile which was at the same time passionate and proud, he whispered:

"Dare say we'll not find the time long until to-morrow morning. What do_you_ think, my little beauty?"

Something in his voice rather than in his question made my heart beat, and I could feel my face growing hot. 

"Not taken off your things yet?" he said. "Come, let me help you. "

I drew out my hat-pins and removed my hat. At the same moment my husbandremoved my sables and cloak, and as he did so he put his arms about me, and held me close to him. 

I shuddered. I tried not to, but I could not help it. My husband laughedagain, and said:

"Not got over it yet, little woman? Perhaps that's only because you arenot quite used to me. "

Still laughing he pulled me still closer to him, and putting one of hishands under my chin he kissed me on the mouth. 

It will be difficult and perhaps it will be ridiculous to say how myhusband's first kiss shocked me. My mouth felt parched, I had a sense ofintense disgust, and before I was quite aware of what I was doing I hadput up both hands to push him off. 

"Come, come, this is going too far, " he said, in a tone that was halfplayful, half serious. "It was all very well in the automobile; buthere, in your own rooms, you know. . . . "

He broke off and laughed again, saying that if my modesty only meantthat nobody had ever kissed me before it made me all the more charmingfor him. 

I could not help feeling a little ashamed of my embarrassment, andcrossing in front of my husband I seated myself in a chair before thefire. He looked after me with a smile that made my heart tremble, andthen, coming behind my chair, he put his arms about my shoulders andkissed my neck. 

A shiver ran through me. I felt as if I had suffered a kind ofindecency. I got up and changed my place. My husband watched me with thelook of a man who wanted to roar with laughter. It was the proud andinsolent as well as passionate look of one who had never so much ascontemplated resistance. 

"Well, this is funny, " he said. "But we'll see presently! We'll see!"

A waiter came in for orders, and early as it was my husband asked fordinner to be served immediately. My heart was fluttering excitedly bythis time and I was glad of the relief which the presence of otherpeople gave me. 

While the table was being laid my husband talked of the doings of theday. He asked who was "the seedy old priest" who had given us "thesermon" at the wedding breakfast--he had evidently forgotten that he hadseen the Father before. 

I told him the "seedy old priest" was Father Dan, and he was a saint ifever there was one. 

"A saint, is he?" said my husband. "Wish saint were not synonymous withsimpleton, though. "

Then he gave me his own views of "the holy state of matrimony. " Byholding people together who ought to be apart it often caused moremisery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely naturaladulteries and desertions, which a man had sometimes to repair bymarriage or else allow himself to be regarded as a seducer and ascoundrel. 

I do not think my husband was conscious of the naive coarseness of allthis, as spoken to a young girl who had only just become his wife. I amsure he was not aware that he was betraying himself to me in every wordhe uttered and making the repugnance I had begun to feel for him deepeninto horror. 

My palms became moist, and again and again I had to dry them with myhandkerchief. I was feeling more frightened and more ashamed than I hadever felt before, but nevertheless when we sat down to dinner I tried tocompose myself. Partly for the sake of appearance before the servants, and partly because I was taking myself to task for the repugnance Ifelt towards my husband, I found something to say, though my voiceshook. 

My husband ate ravenously and drank a good deal. Once or twice, when heinsisted on pouring out champagne for me, I clinked glasses with him. Although every moment at table was increasing my fear and disgust, Isometimes allowed myself to laugh. 

Encouraged by this he renewed his endearments even before the waitershad left the room, and when they had gone, with orders not to returnuntil he rang, and the door was closed behind them, he switched off thelights, pushed a sofa in front of the fire, put me to sit on it, satdown beside me and redoubled his tenderness. 

"How's my demure little nun now?" he said. "Frightened, wasn't she?They're all frightened at first, bless them!"

I could smell the liquor he had been drinking. I could see by thefirelight the prominent front tooth (partly hidden by his moustache)which I had noticed when I saw him first, and the down of soft hairwhich grew as low on his hands as his knuckles. Above all I thought Icould feel the atmosphere of other women about him--loose women, badwomen as it seemed to me--and my fear and disgust began to be mixed witha kind of physical horror. 

For a little while I tried to fight against this feeling, but when hebegan to put his arms about me, calling me by endearing names, complaining of my coldness, telling me not to be afraid of him, reminding me that I belonged to him now, and must do as he wished, afaintness came over me, I trembled from head to foot and made someeffort to rise. 

"Let me go, " I said. 

"Nonsense, " he said, laughing and holding me to my seat. "You bewitchinglittle woman! You're only teasing me. How they love to tease, thesecharming little women!"

The pupils of his eyes were glistening. I closed my own eyes in order toavoid his look. At the next moment I felt his hand stray down my bodyand in a fury of indignation I broke out of his arms and leapt to myfeet. 

When I recovered my self-possession I was again looking out of thewindow, and my husband, who was behind me, was saying in a tone of angerand annoyance:

"What's the matter with you? I can't understand. What have I done? Goodheavens, we are man and wife, aren't we?"

I made no answer. My heart which had been hot with rage was becomingcold with dread. It seemed to me that I had suffered an outrage on mynatural modesty as a human being, a sort of offence against my dignityas a woman. 

It was now dark. With my face to the window I could see nothing. Therain was beating against the glass. The sea was booming on the rocks. Iwanted to fly, but I felt caged--morally and physically caged. 

My husband had lit a cigarette and was walking up and down thesitting-room, apparently trying to think things out. After awhile heapproached me, out his hand on my shoulder and said:

"I see how it is. You're tired, and no wonder. You've had a long andexhausting day. Better go to bed. We'll have to be up early. "

Glad to escape from his presence I allowed him to lead me to the largebedroom. As I was crossing the threshold he told me to undress and getinto bed, and after that he said something about waiting. Then he closedthe door softly and I was alone. 

THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

There was a fire in the bedroom and I sat down in front of it. Manyforces were warring within me. I was trying to fix my thoughts and foundit difficult to do so. 

Some time passed. My husband's man came in with the noiseless step ofall such persons, opened one of the portmanteaux and laid out hismaster's combs and brushes on the dressing table and his sleeping suiton the bed. A maid of the hotel followed him, and taking my own sleepingthings out of the top tray of my trunk she laid them out beside myhusband's. 

"Good-night, my lady, " they said in their low voices as they went out ontiptoe. 

I hardly heard them. My mind, at first numb, was now going at lightningspeed. Brought face to face for the first time with one of the greatestfacts of a woman's life I was asking myself why I had not reckoned withit before. 

I had not even thought of it. My whole soul had been so much occupiedwith one great spiritual issue--that I did not love my husband (as Iunderstood love), that my husband did not love me--that I had never onceplainly confronted, even in my own mind, the physical fact that is thefirst condition of matrimony, and nobody had mentioned it to me or evenhinted at it. 

I could not plead that I did not know of this condition. I was young butI was not a child. I had been brought up in a convent, but a convent isnot a nursery. Then why had I not thought of it?

While sitting before the fire, gathering together these dark thoughts, Iwas in such fear that I was always conscious of my husband's movementsin the adjoining room. At one moment there was the jingling of his glassagainst the decanter, at another moment the smell of his cigarettesmoke. From time to time he came to the door and called to me in a sortof husky whisper, asking if I was in bed. 

"Don't keep me long, little girl. "

I shuddered but made no reply. 

At last he knocked softly and said he was coming in. I was stillcrouching over the fire as he came up behind me. 

"Not in bed yet?" he said. "Then I must put you to bed. "

Before I could prevent him he had lifted me in his arms, dragged me onto his knee and was pulling down my hair, laughing as he did so, callingme by coarse endearing names and telling me not to fight and struggle. 

But the next thing I knew I was back in the sitting-room, where I hadswitched up the lights, and my husband, whose face was distorted bypassion, was blazing out at me. 

"What do you mean?" he said. "I'm your husband, am I not? You are mywife, aren't you? What did you marry for? Good heavens, can it bepossible that you don't know what the conditions of matrimony are? Isthat what comes of being brought up in a convent? But has your fatherallowed you to marry without. . . . And your Aunt--what in God's namehas the woman been doing?"

I crossed towards the smaller bedroom intending to enter it, but myhusband intercepted me. 

"Don't be a fool, " he said, catching at my wrist. "Think of theservants. Think what they'd say. Think what the whole island would say. Do you want to make a laughing stock of both of us?"

I returned and sat by the table. My husband lit another cigarette. Nervously flicking the ends off with the index finger of his left hand, and speaking quickly, as if the words scorched his lips, he told me Iwas mistaken if I supposed that he wanted a scene like this. He thoughthe could spend his time better. I was equally mistaken if I imaginedthat he had desired our marriage at all. Something quite different mighthave happened if he could have afforded to please himself. 

He had made sacrifices to marry me, too. Perhaps I had not thought ofthat, but did I suppose a man of his class wanted a person like myfather for his father-in-law. And then my Aunt and my cousins--ugh!

The Bishop, too! Was it nothing that a man had been compelled to makeall those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up Catholics!Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind himself to all themuss and mummery of the Church!

It wasn't over either. That seedy old "saint" was probably my confessor. Did any rational man want another man to come between him and hiswife--knowing all he did and said, and everything about him?

I was heart-sick as I listened to all this. Apparently the moral of itwas that if I had been allowed to marry without being instructed in thefirst conditions of married life my husband had suffered a gross andshocking injustice. 

The disgust I felt was choking me. It was horribly humiliating anddegrading to see my marriage from my husband's point of view, and when Iremembered that I was bound fast to the man who talked to me like this, and that he could claim rights in me, to-night, to-morrow, as long as Ilived, until death parted us, a wild impulse of impotent anger ateverybody and everything made me drop my head on to the table and burstinto tears. 

My husband misunderstood this, as he misunderstood everything. Taking mycrying for the last remnant of my resistance he put his arms round myshoulders again and renewed his fondling. 

"Come, don't let us have any more conjugal scenes, " he said. "The peopleof the hotel will hear us presently, and there will be all sorts ofridiculous rumours. If your family are rather common people you are adifferent pair of shoes altogether. "

He was laughing again, kissing my neck (in spite of my shuddering) andsaying:

"You really please me very much, you do indeed, and if they've kept youin ignorance, what matter? Come now, my sweet little woman, we'll soonrepair that. "

I could bear no more. I _must_ speak and I did. Leaping up and facinground on him I told him my side of the story--how I had been marriedagainst my will, and had not wanted him any more than he had wanted me;how all my objections had been overruled, all my compunctions bornedown; how everybody had been in a conspiracy to compel me, and I hadbeen bought and sold like a slave. 

"But you can't go any farther than that, " I said. "Between you, you haveforced me to marry you, but nobody can force me to obey you, because Iwon't. "

I saw his face grow paler and paler as I spoke, and when I had finishedit was ashen-white. 

"So that's how it is, is it?" he said, and for some minutes more hetramped about the room, muttering inaudible words, as if trying toaccount to himself for my conduct. At length he approached me again andsaid, in the tone of one who thought he was making peace:

"Look here, Mary. I think I understand you at last. You have some otherattachment--that's it, I suppose. Oh, don't think I'm blaming you. I maybe in the same case myself for all you know to the contrary. Butcircumstances have been too strong for us and here we are. Well, we'rein it, and we've got to make the best of it and why shouldn't we? Lotsof people in my class are in the same position, and yet they get alongall right. Why can't we do the same? I'll not be too particular. Neitherwill you. For the rest of our lives let each of us go his and her ownway. But that's no reason why we should be strangers exactly. Not on ourwedding-day at all events. You're a damned pretty woman and I'm. . . . Well, I'm not an ogre, I suppose. We are man and wife, too. So lookhere, we won't expect too much affection from each other--but let's stopthis fooling and be good friends for a little while anyway. Come, now. "

Once more he took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands ashe did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and theimmoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, and I cried:

"No, I will not. Don't you see that I hate and loathe you?"

There could be no mistaking me this time. The truth had fallen on myhusband with a shock. I think it was the last thing his pride hadexpected. His face became shockingly distorted. But after a moment, recovering himself with a cruel laugh that made my hot blood run cold, he said:

"Nevertheless, you shall do as I wish. You are my wife, and as such youbelong to me. The law allows me to compel you and I will. "

The words went shrieking through and through me. He was coming towardsme with outstretched arms, his teeth set, and his pupils fixed. In thedrunkenness of his rage he was laughing brutally. 

But all my fear had left me. I felt an almost murderous impulse. Iwanted to strike him on the face. 

"If you attempt to touch me I will throw myself out of the window, " Isaid. 

"No fear of that, " he said, catching me quickly in his arms. 

"If you do not take your hands off me I'll shriek the house down, " Icried. 

That was enough. He let me go and dropped back from me. At the nextmoment I was breathing with a sense of freedom. Without resistance on myhusband's part I entered the little bedroom to the left and locked thedoor behind me. 

THIRTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

Some further time passed. I sat by the fireless grate with my chin in myhand. If the storm outside was still raging I did not hear it. I waslistening to the confused sounds that came from the sitting-room. 

My husband was pacing to and fro, muttering oaths, knocking against thefurniture, breaking things. At one moment there was a crash of glass, asif he had helped himself to brandy and then in his ungovernable passionflung the decanter into the fire grate. 

Somebody knocked at the sitting-room. It must have been a waiter, forthrough the wall I heard the muffled sound of a voice asking if therehad been an accident. My husband swore at the man and sent him off. Hadn't he told him not to come until he was rung for?

At length, after half an hour perhaps, my husband knocked at the door ofmy little room. 

"Are you there?" he asked. 

I made no answer. 

"Open the door. "

I sat motionless. 

"You needn't be afraid. I'm not going to do anything. I've something tosay. "

Still I made no reply. My husband went away for a moment and then cameback. 

"If you are determined not to open the door I must say what I've got tosay from here. Are you listening?"

Sitting painfully rigid I answered that I was. 

Then he told me that what I was doing would entitle him to annul ourmarriage--in the eyes of the Church at all events. 

If he thought that threat would intimidate me he was mistaken--a wave ofsecret joy coursed through me. 

"It won't matter much to me--I'll take care it won't--but it will be adegrading business for you--invalidity and all that. Are you preparedfor it?"

I continued to sit silent and motionless. 

"I daresay we shall both be laughed at, but I cannot help that. We can'tpossibly live together on terms like these. "

Another wave of joy coursed through me. 

"Anyhow I intend to know before I leave the island how things are to be. I'm not going to take you away until I get some satisfaction. Youunderstand?"

I listened, almost without breathing, but I did not reply. 

"I'm think of writing a letter to your father, and sending Hobson withit in the car immediately. Do you hear me?"

"Yes. "

"Well, you know what your father is. Unless I'm much mistaken he's not aman to have much patience with your semi-romantic, semi-religioussentiments. Are you quite satisfied?"

"Quite. "

"Very well! That's what I'll do, then. "

After this there was a period of quiet in which I assumed that myhusband was writing his letter. Then I heard a bell ring somewhere inthe corridor, and shortly afterwards there was a second voice in thesitting-room, but I could not hear the words that were spoken. I supposeit was Hobson's low voice, for after another short interval of silencethere came the thrum and throb of a motor-car and the rumble ofindia-rubber wheels on the wet gravel of the courtyard in front of thehotel. 

Then my husband knocked at my door again. 

"I've written that letter and Hobson is waiting to take it. Your fatherwill probably get it before he goes to bed. It will be a bad break onthe festivities he was preparing for the village people. But you arestill of the same mind, I suppose?"

I did not speak, but I rose and went over to the window. For some reasondifficult to explain, that reference to the festivities had cut me tothe quick. 

My husband must have been fuming at my apparent indifference, and I feltas if I could see him looking at me, passionate and proud. 

"Between the lot of you I think you've done me a great injustice. Haveyou nothing to say?"

Even then I did not answer. 

"All right! As you please. "

A few minutes afterwards I heard the motor-car turning and driving away. 

The wind had fallen, the waves were rolling into the harbour with thatmonotonous moan which is the sea's memory of a storm, and a full moon, like a white-robed queen, was riding through a troubled sky. 

THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

The moon had died out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying as quietas a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky was crimsoningbefore the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls were swirling andjabbering above the rocks in the harbour below the house before I laydown to sleep. 

I was awakened by a hurried knocking at my door, and by an impatientvoice crying:

"Mary! Mary! Get up! Let me in!"

It was Aunt Bridget who had arrived in my husband's automobile. When Iopened the door to her she came sailing into the room with her newhalf-moon bonnet a little awry, as if she had put it on hurriedly in thedim light of early morning, and, looking at me with her cold grey eyesbehind their gold-rimmed spectacles, she began to bombard me withmingled ridicule and indignant protest. 

"Goodness me, girl, what's all this fuss about? You little simpleton, tell me what has happened!"

She was laughing. I had hardly ever heard Aunt Bridget laugh before. Buther vexation soon got the better of her merriment. 

"His lordship's letter arrived in the middle of the night and nearlyfrightened us out of our senses. Your father was for coming awaystraight, and it would have been worse for you if he had. But I said:'No, this is work for a woman, I'll go, ' and here I am. And now tell me, what in the name of goodness does this ridiculous trouble mean?"

It was hard to say anything on such a subject under such circumstances, especially when so challenged, but Aunt Bridget, without waiting for myreply, proceeded to indicate the substance of my husband's letter. 

From this I gathered that he had chosen (probably to save his pride) toset down my resistance to ignorance of the first conditions ofmatrimony, and had charged my father first and Aunt Bridget afterwardswith doing him a shocking injustice in permitting me to be married tohim without telling me what every girl who becomes a wife ought to know. 

"But, good gracious, " said my Aunt Bridget, "who would have imagined you_didn't_ know. I thought every girl in the world knew before she put upher hair and came out of short frocks. My Betsy did, I'm sure of that. And to think that you--you whom we thought so cute, so cunning. . . . Mary O'Neill, I'm ashamed of you. I really, really am! Why, you goose"(Aunt Bridget was again trying to laugh), "how did you suppose the worldwent on?"

The coarse ridicule of what was supposed to be my maidenly modesty cutme like a knife, but I could not permit myself to explain, so my AuntBridget ran on talking. 

"I see how it has been. It's the fault of that Reverend Mother at theconvent. What sort of a woman is she? Is she a woman at all, I wonder, or only a piece of stucco that ought to be put up in a church corner! Tothink she could have you nine years and never say one word about. . . . Well, well! What has she been doing with you? Talking about themysteries, I suppose--prayers and retreats and novenas, and thespiritual bridegroom and the rest of it, while all the while. . . . Butyou must put the convent out of your head, my girl. You are a marriedwoman now. You've got to think of your husband, and a husband isn't aspiritual bridegroom I can tell you. He's flesh and blood, that's what ahusband is, and you can't expect _him_ to spend his time talking abouteternity and the rosary. Not on his wedding-day, anyway. "

I was hot in my absurd embarrassment, and I dare say my face wasscarlet, but Aunt Bridget showed me no mercy. 

"The way you have behaved is too silly for anything. . . . It really is. A husband's a husband, and a wife's a wife. The wife has to obey herhusband. Of course she has. Every wife has to. Some don't like it. Ican't say that I liked it very much myself. But to think of anybodyobjecting. Why, it's shocking! Nobody ever heard of such a thing. "

I must have flushed up to my forehead, for I became conscious that in myAunt Bridget's eyes there had been a kind of indecency in my conduct. 

"But, come, " she said, "we must be sensible. It's timidity, that's whatit is. I was a little timid myself when I was first married, but I soongot over it. Once get over your timidity and you will be all right. Sakes alive, yes, you'll be as happy as the day is long, and before thistime to-morrow you'll wonder what on earth you made all this fussabout. "

I tried to say that what she predicted could never be, because I did notlove my husband, and therefore . . . But my Aunt Bridget broke in on me, saying:

"Mary O'Neill, don't be a fool. Your maiden days are over now, and youought to know what your husband will do if you persist. "

I jumped at the thought that she meant he would annul our marriage, butthat was not what she was thinking of. 

"He'll find somebody else--that's what he'll do. Serve you right, too. You'll only have yourself to blame for it. Perhaps you think you'll beable to do the same, but you won't. Women can't. He'll be happy enough, and you'll be the only one to suffer, so don't make a fool of yourself. Accept the situation. You may not like your husband too much. I can'tsay I liked the Colonel particularly. He took snuff, and no woman in theworld could keep him in clean pocket handkerchiefs. But when a sensibleperson has got something at stake, she puts up with things. And that'swhat you must do. He who wants fresh eggs must raise his own chickens, you know. "

Aunt Bridget ran on for some time longer, telling me of my father'sanger, which was not a matter for much surprise, seeing how he had builthimself upon my marriage, and how he had expected that I should have achild, a son, to carry on the family. 

"Do you mean to disappoint him after all he has done for you? It wouldbe too silly, too stupid. You'd be the laughing-stock of the wholeisland. So get up and get dressed and be ready and willing to go withhis lordship when he sails by this afternoon's steamer. "

"I can't, " I said. 

"You can't? You mean you won't?"

"Very well, Auntie, I won't. "

At that Aunt Bridget stormed at me for several minutes, telling me thatif my stubborn determination not to leave the island with my husbandmeant that I intended to return home she might inform me at once that Iwas not wanted there and I need not come. 

"I've enough on my hands in that house already, what with Betsyunmarried, and your father doing nothing for her, and that nasty NessyMacLeod making up to him. You ungrateful minx! You are ruiningeverything! After all I've done for you too! But no matter! If you_will_ make your bed I shall take care that you lie on it. "

With that, and the peak of her half-moon bonnet almost dancing over herangry face, Aunt Bridget flounced out of my room. 

Half an hour afterwards, when I went into the sitting-room, I found myfather's advocate, Mr. Curphy, waiting for me. He looked down at me withan indulgent and significant smile, which brought the colour rushingback to my face, put me to sit by his side, touched my arm with one ofhis large white clammy hands, stroked his long brown beard with theother, and then in the half-reproving tone which a Sunday-school teachermight have used to a wayward child, he began to tell me what theconsequences would be if I persisted in my present conduct. 

They would be serious. The law was very clear on marital rights. If awife refused to live with her husband, except on a plea of cruelty orsomething equally plausible, he could apply to the court and compel herto do so; and if she declined, if she removed herself from his abode, orhaving removed, refused to return, the Court might punish her--it mighteven imprison her. 

"So you see, the man is the top dog in a case like this, my dear, and hecan compel the woman to obey him. "

"Do you mean, " I said, "that he can use force to compel her?"

"Reasonable force, yes. I think that's so. And quite right, too, whenyou come to think of it. The woman has entered into a serious contract, and it is the duty of the law to see that she fulfills the conditions ofit. "

I remembered how little I had known of the conditions of the contract Ihad entered into, but I was too heart-sick and ashamed to say anythingabout that. 

"Aw yes, that's so, " said the advocate, "force, reasonable force! Youmay say it puts a woman in a worse position as a wife than she would beif she were a mistress. That's true, but it's the law, and once a womanhas married a man, the only escape from this condition of submission isimprisonment. "

"Then I would rather that--a thousand times rather, " I said, for I washot with anger and indignation. 

Again the advocate smiled indulgently, patted my arm, and answered me asif I were a child. 

"Tut, tut, my dear, tut, tut! You've made a marriage that is founded onsuitability of position, property and education, and everything willcome right by and by. Don't act on a fit of pique or spleen, and sodestroy your happiness, and that of everybody about you. Think of yourfather. Remember what he has done to make this marriage. I may tell youthat he has paid forty thousand pounds to discharge your husband's debtsand undertaken responsibility for an allowance of six thousand a yearbeside. Do you want him to lose all that money?"

I was so sick with disgust at hearing this that I could not speak, andthe advocate, who, in his different way, was as dead to my real feelingsas my husband had been, went on to say:

"Come, be reasonable. You may have suffered some slight, some indignity. No doubt you have. Your husband is proud and he has peculiarities oftemper which we have all to make allowances for. But even if you couldestablish a charge of cruelty against him and so secure aseparation--which you can't--what good would that do you? None atall--worse than none! The financial arrangements would remain the same. Your father would be a frightful loser. And what would you be? A marriedwidow! The worst condition in the world for a woman--especially if sheis young and attractive, and subject to temptations. Ask anybody whoknows--anybody. "

I felt as if I would suffocate with shame. 

"Come now, " said the advocate in his superior way, taking my hand as ifhe were going to lead me like a child to my husband, "let us put an endto this little trouble. His lordship is downstairs and he hasconsented--kindly and generously consented--to wait an hour for youranswer. But he must leave the island by the afternoon steamer, andif. . . . "

"Then tell him he must leave it without me, " I said, as well as I couldfor the anger that was choking me. 

The advocate looked steadily into my face. I think he understood thesituation at last. 

"You mean that--really and truly mean it?" he asked. 

"I do, " I answered, and unable to say or hear any more without breakingout on him altogether I left the room. 

THIRTY-NINTH CHAPTER

Down to this moment I had put on a brave front though my very heart hadbeen trembling; but now I felt that all the weight of law, custom, parental authority and even religion was bearing me down, down, down, and unless help came I must submit in the long run. 

I was back in the small bedroom, with my hot forehead against the coldglass of the window, looking out yet seeing nothing, when somebodyknocked at the door, softly almost timidly. It was Father Dan, and thesight of his dear face, broken up with emotion, was the same to me asthe last plank of a foundering ship to a sailor drowning at sea. 

My heart was so full that, though I knew I ought not, I threw my armsabout his neck and burst into a flood of tears. The good old priest didnot put me away. He smoothed my drooping head and patted my shouldersand in his sweet and simple way he tried to comfort me. 

"Don't cry! Don't worry! It will be all right in the end, my child. "

There was something almost grotesque in his appearance. Under his softclerical outdoor hat he was wearing his faded old cassock, as if he hadcome away hurriedly at a sudden call. I could see what had happened--myfamily had sent him to reprove me and remonstrate with me. 

He sat on a chair by my bed and I knelt on the floor at his feet, justas my mother used to do when I was a child and she was making herconfession. Perhaps he thought of that at the same moment as myself, forthe golden light of my mother's memory lay always about him. For somemoments we did not speak. I think we were both weeping. 

At length I tried to tell him what had happened--hiding nothing, softening nothing, speaking the simple and naked truth. I found itimpossible to do so. My odd-sounding voice was not like my own, and evenmy words seemed to be somebody else's. But Father Dan understoodeverything. 

"I know! I know!" he said, and then, to my great relief, interrupting myhalting explanations, he gave his own interpretation of my husband'sletter. 

There was a higher love and there was a lower love and both werenecessary to God's plans and purposes. But the higher love must comefirst, or else the lower one would seem to be cruel and gross andagainst nature. 

Nature was kind to a young girl. Left to itself it awakened her sex verygently. First with love, which came to her like a whisper in a dream, like the touch of an angel on her sleeping eyelids, so that when sheawoke to the laws of life the mysteries of sex did not startle or appalher. 

But sex in me had been awakened rudely and ruthlessly. Married withoutlove I had been suddenly confronted by the lower passion. What wonderthat I had found it brutal and barbarous?

"That's it, my child! That's it! I know! I know!"

Then he began to blame himself for everything, saying it was all hisfault and that he should have held out longer. When he saw how thingsstood between me and my husband he should have said to my father, to theBishop, and to the lawyers, notwithstanding all their bargainings: "Thismarriage must not go on. It will lead to disaster. It begins to endbadly. "

"But now it is all over, my child, and there's no help for it. "

I think the real strength of my resistance to Aunt Bridget's coarseridicule and the advocate's callous remonstrance must have been thememory of my husband's threat when he talked about the possibleannulment of our marriage. The thought of that came back to me now, andhalf afraid, half ashamed, with a fluttering of the heart, I tried tomention it. 

"Is there no way out?" I asked. 

"What way can there be?" said Father Dan. "God knows I know whatpressure was put upon you; but you are married, you have made your vows, you have given your promises. That's all the world sees or cares about, and in the eyes of the law and the Church you are responsible for allthat has happened. "

With my head still buried in Father Dan's cassock I got it out at last. 

"But annulment! Isn't that possible--under the circumstances?" I asked. 

The good old priest seemed to be too confused to speak for a moment. Then he explained that what I hoped for was quite out of the question. 

"I don't say that in the history of the Church marriages have not beenannulled on equally uncertain grounds, but in this case the civil lawwould require proof--something to justify nullity. Failing that therewould have to be collusion either on one side or both, and that is notpossible--not to you, my child, not to the daughter of your mother, thatdear saint who suffered so long and was silent. "

More than ever now I felt like a ship-broken man with the last planksinking under him. The cold mysterious dread of my husband was creepingback, and the future of my life with him stood before me with startlingvividness. In spite of all my struggling and fighting of the nightbefore I saw myself that very night, the next night, and the next, andevery night and day of my life thereafter, a victim of the samesickening terror. 

"Must I submit, then?" I said. 

Father Dan smoothed my head and told me in his soft voice thatsubmission was the lot of all women. It always had been so in thehistory of the world, and perhaps it always would be. 

"Remember the Epistle we read in church yesterday morning: 'Wives submityourselves to your husbands. '"

With a choking sensation in my throat I asked if he thought I ought togo away with my husband when he left the island by the afternoonsteamer. 

"I see no escape from it, my poor child. They sent me to reprove you. Ican't do that, but neither can I encourage you to resist. It would bewrong. It would be cruel. It would only lead you into further trouble. "

My mouth felt parched, but I contrived to say:

"Then you can hold out no hope for me?"

"God knows I can't. "

"Although I do not love this man I must live with him as his wife?"

"It is hard, very hard, but there seems to be no help for it. "

I rose to my feet, and went back to the window. A wild impulse ofrebellion was coming over me. 

"I shall feel like a bad woman, " I said. 

"Don't say that, " said Father Dan. "You are married to the man anyway. "

"All the same I shall feel like my husband's mistress--his marriedmistress, his harlot. "

Father Dan was shocked, and the moment the words were out of my mouth Iwas more frightened than I had ever been before, for something withinseemed to have forced them out of me. 

When I recovered possession of my senses Father Dan, nervously fumblingwith the silver cross that hung over his cassock, was talking of thesupernatural effect of the sacrament of marriage. It was God Who joinedpeople together, and whom God joined together no man might put asunder. No circumstances either, no trial or tribulation. Could it be thoughtthat a bond so sacred, so indissoluble, was ever made without goodeffect? No, the Almighty had His own ways with His children, and thisgreat mystery of holy wedlock was one of them. 

"So don't lose heart, my child. Who knows what may happen yet? God worksmiracles now just as He did in the old days. You may come . . . Yes, youmay come to love your husband, and then--then all will be well. "

Suddenly out of my despair and my defiance a new thought came to me. Itcame with the memory of the emotion I had experienced during themarriage service, and it thrilled me through and through. 

"Father Dan?" I said, with a nervous cry, for my heart was flutteringagain. 

"What is it, my child?"

It was hard to say what I was thinking about, but with a great effort Istammered it out at last. I should be willing to leave the island withmy husband, and live under the same roof with him, and bear his name, sothat there might be no trouble, or scandal, and nobody except ourselvesmight ever know that there was anything dividing us, any difference ofany kind between us, if he, on his part, would promise--firmly andfaithfully promise--that unless and until I came to love him he wouldnever claim my submission as a wife. 

While I spoke I hardly dared to look at Father Dan, fearing he wouldshake his head again, perhaps reprove me, perhaps laugh at me. But hiseyes which had been moist began to sparkle and smile. 

"You mean that?" he asked. 

"Yes. "

"And you will go away with him on that condition?"

"Yes, yes. "

"Then he must agree to it. "

The pure-minded old priest saw no difficulties, no dangers, no risks ofbreakdown in my girlish scheme. Already my husband had got all he hadbargained for. He had got my father's money in exchange for his noblename, and if he wanted more, if he wanted the love of his wife, let himearn it, let him win it. 

"That's only right, only fair. It will be worth winning, too--betterworth winning than all your father's gold and silver ten times over. Ican tell him that much anyway. "

He had risen to his feet in his excitement, the simple old priest withhis pure heart and his beautiful faith in me. 

"And you, my child, you'll try to love him in return--promise you will. "

A shiver ran through me when Father Dan said that--a sense of therepugnance I felt for my husband almost stifled me. 

"Promise me, " said Father Dan, and though my face must have beenscarlet, I promised him. 

"That's right. That alone will make him a better man. He may be all thatpeople say, but who can measure the miraculous influence of a goodwoman?"

He was making for the door. 

"I must go downstairs now and speak to your husband. But he'll agree. Why shouldn't he? I know he's afraid of a public scandal, and if heattempts to refuse I'll tell him that. . . . But no, that will be quiteunnecessary. Good-bye, my child! If I don't come back you'll know thateverything has been settled satisfactorily. You'll be happy yet. I'msure you will. Ah, what did I say about the mysterious power of thatsolemn and sacred sacrament? Good-bye!"

I meant what I had said. I meant to do what I had promised. God knows Idid. But does a woman ever know her own heart? Or is heaven alone thejudge of it?

At four o'clock that afternoon my husband left Ellan for England. I wentwith him. 

FORTIETH CHAPTER

Having made my bargain I set myself to fulfil the conditions of it. Ihad faithfully promised to try to love my husband and I prepared to doso. 

Did not love require that a wife should look up to and respect and evenreverence the man she had married? I made up my mind to do that byshutting my eyes to my husband's obvious faults and seeing only hisbetter qualities. 

What disappointments were in store for me! What crushing and humiliatingdisillusionments!

On the night of our arrival in London we put up at a fashionable hotelin a quiet but well-known part of the West-end, which is inhabitedchiefly by consulting physicians and celebrated surgeons. Here, to mysurprise, we were immediately discovered, and lines of visitors waitedupon my husband the following morning. 

I thought they were his friends, and a ridiculous little spurt of pridecame to me from heaven knows where with the idea that my husband must bea man of some importance in the metropolis. 

But I discovered they were his creditors, money-lenders and bookmakers, to whom he owed debts of "honour" which he had been unable or unwillingto disclose to my father and his advocate. 

One of my husband's visitors was a pertinacious little man who cameearly and stayed late. He was a solicitor, and my husband was obviouslyin some fear of him. The interviews between them, while they werecloseted together morning after morning in one of our two sitting-rooms, were long and apparently unpleasant, for more than once I caught thesound of angry words on both sides, with oaths and heavy blows upon thetable. 

But towards the end of the week, my husband's lawyer arrived in London, and after that the conversations became more pacific. 

One morning, as I sat writing a letter in the adjoining room, I heardlaughter, the popping of corks, the jingling of glasses, and thedrinking of healths, and I judged that the, difficult and disagreeablebusiness had been concluded. 

At the close of the interview I heard the door opened and my husbandgoing into the outer corridor to see his visitors to the lift, and thensomething prompted me--God alone knows what--to step into the room theyhad just vacated. 

It was thick with tobacco smoke. An empty bottle of champagne (withthree empty wine glasses) was on the table, and on a desk by the windowwere various papers, including a sheet of foolscap which bore a seal andseveral signatures, and a thick packet of old letters bound togetherwith a piece of purple ribbon. 

Hardly had I had time to recognise these documents when my husbandreturned to the room, and by the dark expression of his face I sawinstantly that he thought I had looked at them. 

"No matter!" he said, without any preamble. "I might as well tell you atonce and have done with it. "

He told me. The letters were his. They had been written to a woman whomhe had promised to marry, and he had had to buy them back from her. Although for three years he had spent a fortune on the creature she hadshown him no mercy. Through her solicitor, who was a scoundrel, she hadthreatened him, saying in plain words that if he married anybody elseshe would take proceedings against him immediately. That was why, inspite of the storm, we had to come up to London on the day after ourwedding. 

"Now you know, " said my husband. "Look here" (holding out the sheet offoolscap), "five thousand pounds--that's the price I've had to pay formarrying. "

I can give no idea of the proud imperiousness and the impression ofinjury with which my husband told his brutal story. But neither can Iconvey a sense of the crushing shame with which I listened to it. Therewas not a hint of any consciousness on his part of my side of the case. Not a suggestion of the clear fact that the woman he had promised tomarry had been paid off by money which had come through me. Not athought of the humiliation he had imposed upon his wife in dragging herup to London at the demand of his cast-off mistress. 

When my husband had finished speaking I could not utter a word. I wasafraid that my voice would betray the anger that was boiling in me. ButI was also degraded to the very dust in my own eyes, and to prevent anoutburst of hysterical tears I ran back to my room and hid my face in mypillow. 

What was the good of trying to make myself in love with a man who wasseparated from me by a moral chasm that could never be passed? What wasthe good? What was the good?

FORTY-FIRST CHAPTER

But next morning, having had time to think things out in my simple andignorant way, I tried to reconcile myself to my position. Rememberingwhat Aunt Bridget had said, both before my marriage and after it, aboutthe different moralities of men and women, I told myself I had placed mystandard too high. 

Perhaps a husband was not a superior being, to be regarded with respectand reverence, but a sort of grown-up child whom it was the duty of awife to comfort, coax, submit to and serve. 

I determined to do this. Still clinging to the hope of falling in lovewith my husband, I set myself to please him by every means within mypower, even to the length of simulating sentiments which I did not feel. 

But what a task I was setting myself! What a steep and stony Calvary Iwas attempting to climb!

After the degrading business with the other woman had been concluded Ithought we should have left England immediately on the honeymoon tourwhich my husband had mapped out for us, but he told me that would not beconvenient and we must remain in London a little longer. We stayed sixweeks altogether, and never did a young wife pass a more cheerless andweary time. 

I had no friends of my own within reach, and to my deep if secretmortification no woman of my husband's circle called upon me. But a fewof his male friends were constantly with us, including Mr. Eastcliff, who had speedily followed us from Ellan, and a Mr. Vivian, who, thoughthe brother of a Cabinet Minister, seemed to me a very vain and vapidperson, with the eyes of a mole, a vacant smile, a stupid expression, anabrupt way of speaking through his teeth, and a shrill voice which gavethe impression of screeching against the wind. 

With these two men, and others of a similar kind, we passed many hoursof nearly every day, lunching with them, dining with them, walking withthem, driving with them, and above all playing bridge with them in oneof our sitting rooms in the hotel. 

I knew nothing of the game to begin with, never having touched a card inmy life, but in accordance with the theories which I believed to beright and the duties I had imposed upon myself, I took a hand with myhusband when he could find nobody better to be his partner. 

The results were very disheartening. In spite of my desire to please Iwas slow to learn, and my husband's impatience with my mistakes, whichconfused and intimidated me, led to some painful humiliations. First helaughed, next he sneered, then he snapped me up in the midst of myexplanations and apologies, and finally, at a moment of loss, he brokeout on me with brutal derision, saying he had never had much opinion ofmy intellect, but was now quite sure that I had no more brains than arabbit and could not say Boo to a goose. 

One day when we were alone, and he was lying on the couch with hisvicious little terrier by his side, I offered to sing to him. Remembering how my voice had been praised, I thought it would bepleasant to my husband to see that there was something I really coulddo. But nine years in a convent had left me with next to no music butmemories of the long-breathed harmonies of some of the beautiful massesof our Church, and hardly had I begun on these when my husband cried:

"Oh, stop, stop, for heaven's sake stop, or I shall think we'reattending a funeral. "

Another day I offered to read to him. The Reverend Mother used to say Iwas the best reader she had ever heard, but perhaps it was notaltogether my husband's fault if he formed a different opinion. Andindeed I cannot but think that the holy saints themselves would havelaughed if they had heard me reading aloud, in the voice and intonationwhich I had assumed for the meditations of St. Francis of Assisi, themystic allusions to "certs, " and "bookies, " and "punters, " and "evens, "and "scratchings, " which formed the substance of the sporting journalsthat were my husband's only literature. 

"Oh, stop it, stop it, " he cried again. "You read the 'Winning Post' asif it were the Book of Revelation. "

As time passed the gulf that separated me from my husband became stillgreater. If I could have entertained him with any kind of gossip wemight have got on better. But I had no conversation that interested him, and he had little or none that I could pretend to understand. He lovedthe town; I loved the country; he loved the night and the blaze ofelectric lights; I loved the morning and the sweetness of the sun. 

At the bottom of my heart I knew that his mind was common, low andnarrow, and that his tastes were gross and vulgar, but I was determinedto conquer the repulsion I felt for him. 

It was impossible. If I could have struck one spark from the flint ofhis heart the relations between us might have been different. If hislook could have met my look in a single glance of understanding I couldhave borne with his impatience and struggled on. 

But nothing of this kind ever happened, and when one dreary night aftergrumbling at the servants, cursing his fate and abusing everybody andeverything, he put on his hat and went out saying he had "better havemarried Lena [the other woman] after all, " for in that case he wouldhave had "some sort of society anyway, " the revulsion I had felt on thenight of my marriage came sweeping over me like a wave of the sea, and Iasked myself again, "What's the good? What's the good?"

FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER

Nevertheless next day I found myself taking my husband's side againstmyself. 

If he had sacrificed anything in order to marry me it was my duty tomake it up to him. 

I resolved that I _should_ make it up to him. I would study my husband'slikes and dislikes in every little thing. I would share in his pleasuresand enter into his life. I would show him that a wife was somethingother and better than any hired woman in the world, and that when shecast in her lot with her husband it was for his own sake only and notfor any fortune he could spend on her. 

"Yes, yes, that's what I'll do, " I thought, and I became more solicitousof my husband's happiness than if I had really and truly loved him. 

A woman would smile at the efforts which I made in my inexperience tomake my husband forget his cast-off mistress, and indeed some of themwere very childish. 

The first was a ridiculous failure. 

My husband's birthday was approaching and I wished to make him apresent. It was difficult to know what to select, for I knew little ornothing of his tastes or wants; but walking one day in a street offOxford Street I saw, in the window of a shop for the sale of objects ofecclesiastical _vertu_, among crosses and crucifixes and rosaries, alittle ivory ink-stand and paper-holder, which was surmounted by afigure of the Virgin. 

I cannot for the life of me conceive why I thought this would be asuitable present for my husband, except that the face of Our Lady was soyoung, so sweet, so beautiful, and so exquisitely feminine that itseemed impossible that any man in the world should not love her. Buthowever that might be I bought her, and carrying her home in a cab, Iset her on my husband's desk without a word, and then stood by, like themother of Moses, to watch the result. 

There was no result--at first at all events. My husband was severalhours in the room with my treasure without appearing to be aware of itspresence. But towards evening his two principal friends came to playbridge with him, and then, from the ambush of my own apartments, I heardthe screechy voice of Mr. Vivian saying:

"Dash it all, Jimmy, you don't say you're going to be a Pape?"

"Don't fret yourself, old fellow, " replied my husband. "That's my wife'slittle flutter. Dare say the poor fool has had to promise her priest tomake me a 'vert. '"

My next experiment was perhaps equally childish but certainly moresuccessful. 

Seeing that my husband was fond of flowers, and was rarely without arose in his buttonhole, I conceived the idea of filling his room withthem in honour of his birthday. With this view I got up very early, before anybody in the hotel was stirring, and hurried off to CoventGarden, through the empty and echoing streets, while the air of Londonwas fresh with the breath of morning and the big city within itshigh-built walls seemed to dream of the green fields beyond. 

I arrived at the busy and noisy square just as the waggons were rollingin from the country with huge crates of red and white roses, bright withthe sunshine and sparkling with the dew. Then buying the largest andloveliest and costliest bunch of them (a great armful, as much as Icould hold), I hurried back to the hotel and set them in vases andglasses in every part of my husband's room--his desk, his sideboard, hismantelpiece, and above all his table, which a waiter was laying forbreakfast--until the whole place was like a bridal bower. 

"Ah, this is something like, " I heard my husband say as he came out ofhis bedroom an hour or two afterwards with his vicious terrier at hisheels. 

I heard no more until he had finished breakfast, and then, while drawingon his gloves for his morning walk, he said to the waiter, who wasclearing the table, "Tell your Manageress I am much obliged to her for the charming flowerswith which she has decorated my room this morning. "

"But it wasn't the manageress, my lord, " said the waiter. 

"Then who was it?"

"It was her . . . Her ladyship, " said the waiter. 

"O-oh!" said my husband in a softer, if more insinuating tone, and a fewminutes afterwards he went out whistling. 

God knows that was small reward for the trouble I had taken, but I wasso uplifted by the success of my experiment that I determined to gofarther, and when towards evening of the same day a group of myhusband's friends came to tell him that they had booked a box at awell-known musical comedy theatre, I begged to be permitted to jointhem. 

"Nonsense, my dear! Brompton Oratory would suit you better, " said myhusband, chucking me under the chin. 

But I persisted in my importunities, and at length Mr. Eastcliff said:

"Let her come. Why shouldn't she?"

"Very well, " said my husband, pinching my cheek. "As you please. But ifyou don't like it don't blame _me_. "

It did not escape me that as a result of my change of front my husbandhad risen in his own esteem, and that he was behaving towards me as onewho thought he had conquered my first repugnance, or perhapstriumphantly ridden over it. But in my simplicity I was so fixed in mydetermination to make my husband forget the loss of his mistress that Ihad no fear of his familiarities and no misgivings about his mistakes. 

All that was to come later, with a fresh access of revulsion anddisgust. 

FORTY-THIRD CHAPTER

I had seen enough of London by this time to know that the dresses whichhad been made for me at home were by no means the _mode_; but after Ihad put on the best-fitting of my simple quaker-like costumes with astring of the family pearls about my neck and another about my head, notall the teaching of the good women of the convent could prevent me fromthinking that my husband and his friends would have no reason to beashamed of me. 

We were a party of six in all, whereof I was the only woman, and weoccupied a large box on the first tier near the stage, a position ofprominence which caused me a certain embarrassment, when, as happenedat one moment of indefinable misery, the opera glasses of the people inthe dress-circle and stalls were turned in our direction. 

I cannot say that the theatre impressed me. Certainly the buildingitself did not do so, although it was beautifully decorated in white andgold, for I had seen the churches of Rome, and in my eyes they were muchmore gorgeous. 

Neither did the audience impress me, for though I had never before seenso many well-dressed people in one place, I thought too many of the men, when past middle life, seemed fat and overfed, and too many of thewomen, with their plump arms and bare shoulders, looked as if theythought of nothing but what to eat and what to put on. 

Nor did the performers impress me, for though when the curtain rose, disclosing the stage full of people, chiefly girls, in delicate andbeautiful toilettes, I thought I had never before seen so many lovelyand happy faces, after a while, when the faces fell into repose, Ithought they were not really lovely and not really happy, but hard andstrained and painful, as if life had been very cruel. 

And, above all, I was not impressed by the play, for I thought, in myignorance of such productions, that I had never heard anything sofrivolous and foolish, and more than once I found myself wonderingwhether my good nuns, if they could have been present, would not haveconcluded that the whole company had taken leave of their senses. 

There was, however, one thing which did impress me, and that was theleading actor. It was a woman, and when she first came on to the stage Ithought I had never in my life seen anybody so beautiful, with herlovely soft round figure, her black eyes, her red lips, her pearly whiteteeth, and a smile so sunny that it had the effect of making everybodyin the audience smile with her. 

But the strange thing was--I could not account for it--that after a fewminutes I thought her extremely ugly and repellent, for her face seemedto be distorted by malice and envy and hatred and nearly every other badpassion. 

Nevertheless she was a general favourite, for not only was she applaudedbefore she did anything, but everything she said, though it wassometimes very silly, was accompanied by a great deal of laughter, andeverything she sang, though her voice was no great matter, was followedby a chorus of applause. 

Seeing this, and feeling that her appearance had caused a flutter ofinterest in the box behind me, I laughed and applauded also, inaccordance with the plan I had prepared for myself, of sharing myhusband's pleasures and entering into his life, although at the bottomof my heart I really thought the joy was not very joyful or the mirthvery merry. 

This went on for nearly an hour, and then a strange thing happened. Iwas leaning forward on the velvet barrier of the box in front of me, laughing and clapping my hands with the rest, when all at once I becameaware that the lady had wheeled about, and, walking down the stage inthe direction of our box, was looking boldly back at me. 

I could not at first believe it to be so, and even now I cannot saywhether it was something in her face, or something whispered at my backwhich flashed it upon my mind that this was the woman my husband oughtto have married, the woman whose place I had taken, the woman of thefoolscap document and the letters in the purple ribbon. 

After that I could play my poor little part no longer, and though Icontinued to lean on the yellow velvet of the barrier in front of me Idropped my eyes as often as that woman was on the stage, and hoped andprayed for the end of the performance. 

It came at length with a crash of instruments and voices, and a fewminutes afterwards my husband and I were in the cab on our way back tothe hotel. 

I was choking with mingled anger and shame--anger at my husband forpermitting me to come to a place in which I could be exposed to a publicaffront from his cast-off mistress, shame at the memory of the pitifulscheme for entering into his life which had fallen to such a welter ofwreck and ruin. 

But my husband himself was only choking with laughter. 

"It was as good as a play, " he said. "Upon my soul it was! I never sawanything funnier in the whole course of my life. "

That served him, repeated again and again, until we reached the hotel, when he ordered a bottle of wine to be sent upstairs, and then shookwith suppressed laughter as we went up in the lift. 

Coming to our floor I turned towards my bedroom, wishing to be alonewith my outraged feelings, but my husband drew me into one of oursitting-rooms, telling me he had something to say. 

He put me to sit in an arm-chair, threw off his overcoat, lit acigarette, as well as he could for the spurts and gusts of his laughter, and then, standing back to the fire-place, with one hand in his pocketand his coat-tail over his arm, he told me the cause of his merriment. 

"I don't mind telling you that was Lena, " he said. "The good-lookinggirl in the scarlet dress and the big diamonds. She spotted me themoment she stepped on to the stage. Must have guessed who you were, too. Did you see how she looked at you? Thought I had brought you there towalk over her. I'm sure she did!"

There was another gust of laughter and then--

"She'd been going about saying I had married an old frump for the sakeof her fortune, and when she saw that you could wipe her off the face ofthe earth without a gown that was worth wearing, she was ready to diewith fury. "

There was another gust of laughter through the smoke that was spurtingfrom his mouth and then--

"And you, too, my dear! Laughing and applauding! She thought you weretrying to crow over her! On her own particular barn-door, too! Upon mysoul, it was too amusing. I wonder she didn't throw something at you. She's like that when she's in her tantrums. "

The waiter came in with the wine and my husband poured out a glass forme. 

"Have a drink. No? Well, here's to your health, my dear. I can't getover it. I really can't. Lena's too funny for anything. Why, what elsedo you think she's been saying? She's been saying I'll come back to heryet. Yes, 'I'll give him six months to come crawling back to me, ' shesaid to Eastcliff and Vivian and some of the other fellows at the Club. Wonder if she thinks so now? . . . I wonder?"

He threw away his cigarette, drank another glass of the wine, came closeup to me and said in a lower tone, which made my skin creep as withcold. 

"Whether she's right or wrong depends on you, though. "

"On me?"

"Why, yes, of course. That's only natural. One may have all the goodwillin the world, but a man's a man, you know. "

I felt my lips quivering with anger, and in an effort to control myselfI rose to go, but my husband drew me back into my chair and sat on thearm of it. 

"Don't go yet. By the way, dear, I've never thanked you for thebeautiful flowers with which you decorated my room this morning. Charming! But I always knew you would soon come round to it. "

"Come round to what?" I said, but it was just as if somebody else werespeaking. 

"_You_ know. Of course you know. When that simple old priest proposedthat ridiculous compact I agreed, but I knew quite well that it wouldsoon break down. Not on my side, though. Why should it? A man can affordto wait. But I felt sure you would soon tire of your resistance. And youhave, haven't you? Oh, I'm not blind. I've seen what's been going on, though I've said nothing about it. "

Again I tried to rise, and again my husband held me to my seat, saying:

"Don't be ashamed. There's no reason for that. You were rather hard onme, you know, but I'm going to forget all about it. Why shouldn't I?I've got the loveliest little woman in the world, so I mean to meet herhalf way, and she's going to get over her convent-bred ideas and be mydear little darling wife. Now isn't she?"

I could have died of confusion and the utter degradation of shame. Tothink that my poor efforts to please him, my vain attempts to look up tohim and reverence him, my bankrupt appeals to the spiritual woman in methat I might bring myself to love him, as I thought it was my duty todo, should have been perverted by his gross and vulgar mind intoovertures to the animal man in him--this was more than I could bear. Ifelt the tears gushing to my eyes, but I kept them back, for myself-pity was not so strong as my wrath. 

I rose this time without being aware of his resistance. 

"Let me go to bed, " I said. 

"Certainly! Most certainly, my dear, but. . . . "

"Let me go to bed, " I said again, and at the next moment I stepped intomy room. 

He did not attempt to follow me. I saw in a mirror in front what wastaking place behind me. 

My husband was standing where I had left him with a look first ofamazement and then of rage. 

"I can't understand you, " he said. "Upon my soul I can't! There isn't aman in the world who could. " After that he strode into his own bedroomand clashed the door after him. 

"Oh, what's the good?" I thought again. 

It was impossible to make myself in love with my husband. It was no usetrying. 

FORTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

I must leave it to those who know better than I do the way to read thedeep mysteries of a woman's heart, to explain how it came to pass thatthe only result of this incident was to make me sure that if we remainedin London much longer my husband would go back to the other woman, andto say why (seeing that I did not love him) I should have becomefeverishly anxious to remove him from the range of this temptation. 

Yet so it was, for the very next morning, I wrote to my father saying Ihad been unwell and begging him to use his influence with my husband toset out on the Egyptian trip without further delay. 

My father's answer was prompt. What he had read between the lines of myletter I do not know; what he said was this--

 "Daughter--Certainly! I am writing to son-in-law telling him to quit London quick. I guess you've been too long there already. And while you are away you can draw on me yourself for as much as you please, for where it is a matter of money you must never let nobody walk over you. 

 Yours--&c. "

The letter to my husband produced an immediate result. Withintwenty-four hours, the telephone was at work with inquiries about trainsand berths on steamers; and within a week we were on our way toMarseilles to join the ship that was to take us to Port Said. 

Our state-rooms were on the promenade deck of the steamer with apassage-way between them. This admitted of entirely separate existences, which was well, for knowing or guessing my share in our alteredarrangements, my husband had become even more morose than before, and noconversation could be sustained between us. 

He spent the greater part of his time in his state-room, grumbling atthe steward, abusing his valet, beating his bad-tempered terrier andcursing the luck that had brought him on this senseless voyage. 

More than ever now I felt the gulf that divided us. I could not pass onesingle hour with him in comfort. My life was becoming as cold as anempty house, and I was beginning to regret the eagerness with which Ihad removed my husband from a scene in which he had at least lived thelife of a rational creature, when an unexpected event brought me athrill of passing pleasure. 

Our seats in the saloon were at the top of the doctor's table, and thedoctor himself was a young Irishman of three or four-and-twenty, asbright and breezy as a March morning and as racy of the soil as new-cutpeat. 

Hearing that I was from Ellan he started me by asking if by chance Iknew Martin Conrad. 

"Martin Conrad?" I repeated, feeling (I hardly knew why) as if a rosyveil were falling over my face and neck. 

"Yes, Mart Conrad, as we call him. The young man who has gone out asdoctor with Lieutenant ----'s expedition to the South Pole?"

A wave of tender feeling from my childhood came surging up to my throatand I said:

"He was the first of my boy friends--in fact the only one. "

The young doctor's eyes sparkled and he looked as if he wanted to throwdown his soup-spoon, jump up, and grasp me by both hands. 

"God bless me, is that so?" he said. 

It turned out that Martin and he had been friends at Dublin University. They had worked together, "roomed" together, and taken their degrees atthe same time. 

"So you know Mart? Lord alive, the way things come out!"

It was easy to see that Martin was not only his friend but his hero. Hetalked of him with a passionate love and admiration with which men, whatever they feel, rarely speak of each other. 

Martin was the salt of the earth. He was the finest fellow and thestaunchest friend and the bravest-hearted chap that walked under thestars of God. 

"The greatest chum I have in the world, too, and by the holy ImmaculateMother I'm destroyed at being away from him. "

It was like music to hear him speak. A flood of joy went sweepingthrough me at every word of praise he gave to Martin. And yet--I cannotexplain why, unless it was the woman in me, the Irish-woman, orsomething like it--but I began to depreciate Martin, in order to "hoosh"him on, so that he might say more on the same subject. 

"Then he _did_ take his degree, " I said. "He was never very clever athis lessons, I remember, and I heard that he was only just able toscrape through his examinations. "

The young doctor fell to my bait like a darling. With a flaming face anda nervous rush of racy words which made me think that if I closed myeyes I should be back on the steps of the church in Rome talking toMartin himself, he told me I was mistaken if I thought his friend was anumskull, for he had had "the biggest brain-pan in College Green, " andthe way he could learn things when he wanted to was wonderful. 

He might be a bit shaky in his spelling, and perhaps he couldn't lickthe world in Latin, but his heart was always in exploring, and the wayhe knew geography, especially the part of it they call the "Unknown, "the Arctic, and the Antarctic, and what Charcot had done there, andBiscoe and Bellamy and D'Urville and Greely and Nansen and Shackletonand Peary, was enough to make the provost and professors look like foolsof the earth by the side of him. 

"Why, what do you think?" said the doctor. "When he went to London toapply for his billet, the Lieutenant said to him: 'You must have beendown there before, young man. ' 'No such luck, ' said Martin. 'But youknow as much about the Antarctic already as the whole boiling of us puttogether, ' said the Lieutenant. Yes, by St. Patrick and St. Thomas, he'sa geographer any way. "

I admitted that much, and to encourage the doctor to go on I told himwhere I had seen Martin last, and what he had said of his expedition. 

"In Rome you say?" said the doctor, with a note of jealousy. "You beatme there then. I saw him off from London, though. A few of us Dublinboys, being in town at the time, went down to Tilbury to see him sail, and when they were lifting anchor and the tug was hitching on, we stoodon the pier--sixteen strong--and set up some of our college songs. 'Stopyour noising, boys, ' said he, 'the Lieutenant will be hearing you. ' Butnot a bit of it. We sang away as long as we could see him going out withthe tide, and then we went back in the train, smoking our pipes like somany Vauxhall chimneys, and narra a word out of the one of us. . . . Yes, yes, there are some men like that. They come like the stars ofnight and go like the light of heaven. Same as there are some women whowalk the world like the sun, and leave the grass growing green wherevertheir feet have trod. "

It was very ridiculous, I did not then understand why it should be so, but the tears came gushing into my eyes while the doctor spoke, and itwas as much as I could do to preserve my composure. 

What interpretation my husband put upon my emotion I do not know, but Isaw that his face darkened, and when the doctor turned to him to ask ifhe also knew Martin he answered curtly and brusquely, "Not I. No loss either, I should say. "

"No loss?" said the doctor. "Show me the man under the stars of Godthat's fit to hold a candle to Martin Conrad, and by the angel GabrielI'll go fifty miles out of my way to put a sight on him. "

More than ever after this talk about Martin Conrad I was feelingdefenceless, and at the mercy of my husband's wishes and whims, whensomething happened which seemed to change his character altogether. 

The third day out, on a bright and quiet morning, we called at Malta, and while my husband went ashore to visit some friends in the garrison, I sat on deck watching the life of the little port and looking at thebig warships anchored in the bay. 

A Maltese woman came on board to sell souvenirs of the island, andpicking out of her tray a tiny twisted thing in coral, I asked what itwas. 

"That's a charm, my lady, " said the woman. 

"A charm for what?"

"To make my lady's husband love her. "

I felt my face becoming crimson, but my heart was sore, so in mysimplicity I bought the charm and was smuggling it into my bag when Ibecame aware that one of my fellow-passengers, a lady, was looking downat me. 

She was a tall, singularly handsome woman, fashionably and (although onshipboard) almost sumptuously dressed. A look in her face was hauntingme with a memory I could not fix when she stooped and said:

"Aren't you Mary O'Neill?"

The voice completed the identification, and I knew who it was. It wasAlma Lier. 

She was now about seven-and-twenty and in the prime of her youngwomanhood. Her beautiful auburn hair lay low over her broad forehead, almost descending to her long sable-coloured eyebrows. Her cheeks werevery white, (rather beyond the whiteness of nature, I thought), and herlips were more than commonly red, with the upper one a little thin andthe lower slightly set forward. But her eyes were still herdistinguishing feature, being larger and blacker than before and havingthat vivid gaze that looked through and through you and made you feelthat few women and no man in the world would have the power to resisther. 

Her movements were almost noiseless, and as she sank into the chair bymy side there was a certain over-sweetness in the soft succulent tonesof the voice with which she began to tell me what had happened to hersince I had seen her last. 

It was a rather painful story. After two or three years in a girls'college in her own country she had set out with her mother for a longtour of the European capitals. In Berlin, at what was falsely called aCharity Ball, she had met a young Russian Count who was understood to berich and related to one of the Grand Ducal families. Against theprotests of her father (a shrewd American banker), she had married theCount, and they had returned to New York, where her mother had socialambitions. 

There they had suffered a serious shock. It turned out that her husbandhad deceived them, and that he was really a poor and quite namelessperson, only remotely related to the family he claimed to belong to. 

Nevertheless Alma had "won out" at last. By digging deep into herfather's treasury she got rid of her treacherous husband, and going "wayout west, " she had been able, in due time, to divorce him. 

Since then she had resumed her family name, being known as Madame Lier, and now she was on her way to Egypt to spend the season at Cairo. 

"And you?" she said. "You stayed long at the convent--yes?"

I answered that I had, and then in my fluttering voice (for some of theold spell of her presence had come sweeping back upon me) I replied oneby one to the questions she asked about the Reverend Mother, the"Reverend Mother Mildred, " Sister Angela and Father Giovanni, not tospeak of myself, whom she had always thought of as "Margaret Mary"because I had looked so innocent and nun-like. 

"And now you are married!" she said. "Married so splendidly, too! Weheard all about it. Mother was so interested. What a lucky girl you are!Everybody says your husband is so handsome and charming. He is, isn'the?"

I was doing my utmost to put the best face upon my condition withoutbetraying the facts or simulating sentiments which I could not feel, when a boat from the shore pulled up at the ship's side, and my husbandstepped on to the deck. 

In his usual morose manner he was about to pass without speaking on hisway to his state-room, when his eyes fell on Alma sitting beside me. Then he stopped and looked at us, and, stepping up, he said, in a tone Ihad never heard from him before:

"Mary, my dear, will you not present me to your friend?"

I hesitated, and then with a quivering of the lips I did so. Butsomething told me as I introduced my husband to Alma, and Alma to myhusband, and they stood looking into each other's eyes and holding eachother's hands (for Alma had risen and I was sitting between them), thatthis was the most momentous incident of my life thus far--that for goodor ill my hour had struck and I could almost hear the bell. 

FORTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

From that hour forward my husband was a changed man. His manner to me, so brusque before, became courteous, kind, almost affectionate. Everymorning he would knock at the door of my state-room to ask if I hadslept well, or if the movement of the steamer had disturbed me. 

His manner to Alma was charming. He was up before breakfast every day, promenading the deck with her in the fresh salt air. I would slide backmy window and hear their laughter as they passed, above the throb of theengines and the wash of the sea. Sometimes they would look in upon meand joke, and Alma would say:

"And how's Margaret Mary this morning?"

Our seats in the saloon had been changed. Now we sat with Alma at theCaptain's table, and though I sorely missed the doctor's racy talk aboutMartin Conrad I was charmed by Alma's bright wit and the fund of herpersonal anecdotes. She seemed to know nearly everybody. My husband kneweverybody also, and their conversation never flagged. 

Something of the wonderful and worshipful feeling I had had for Alma atthe Sacred Heart came back to me, and as for my husband it seemed to methat I was seeing him for the first time. 

He persuaded the Captain to give a dance on our last night at sea, sothe awnings were spread, the electric lights were turned on, and thedeck of the ship became a scene of enchantment. 

My husband and Alma led off. He danced beautifully and she was dressedto perfection. Not being a dancer myself I stood with the Captain in thedarkness outside, looking in on them in the bright and dazzling circle, while the moon-rays were sweeping the waters like a silver fan and thelittle waves were beating the ship's side with friendly pats. 

I was almost happy. In my simplicity I was feeling grateful to Alma forhaving wrought this extraordinary change, so that when, on our arrivalat Port Said, my husband said, "Your friend Madame Lier has made no arrangements for her rooms atCairo--hadn't I better telegraph to our hotel, dear?" I answered, "Yes, "and wondered why he had asked me. 

Our hotel was an oriental building, situated on an island at the furtherside of the Nile. Formerly the palace of a dead Khedive, who had builtit in honour of the visit of an Empress, it had a vast reception hallwith a great staircase. 

There, with separated rooms, as in London, we remained for three months. I was enthralled. Too young and inexperienced to be conscious of thedarker side of the picture before me, I found everything beautiful. Iwas seeing fashionable life for the first time, and it was entrancing. 

Lovely and richly-dressed ladies in silk, velvet, lace, and no limit ofjewellery--the dark French women, the blonde German women, the statelyEnglish women, and the American women with their flexuous grace. Andthen the British soldiers in their various uniforms, the semi-Turks intheir red tarbooshes, and the diplomats of all nationalities, Italian, Austrian, French, German--what a cosmopolitan world it was, what ameeting-place of all nations!

Every hour had its interest, but I liked best the hour of tea on theterrace, for that was the glorious hour of woman, when every conditioninvested her dress with added beauty and her smile with greater charm. 

Such a blaze of colour in the sunshine! Such a sea of muslin, flowers, and feathers! Such lovely female figures in diaphanous clouds oftoilettes, delicate as gossamer and varied as the colours in therainbow! They were like a living bouquet, as they sat under the shade ofthe verandah, with the green lawns and the palm trees in front, thered-coated orchestra behind, and the noiseless forms of swarthyBednouins and Nubians moving to and fro. 

Although I had been brought up in such a different world altogether Icould not help being carried away by all this beauty. My sensesburgeoned out and my heart seemed to expand. 

As for Alma and my husband, they seemed to belong to the scene ofthemselves. She would sit at one of the tea-tables, swishing away thebuzzing flies with a little whip of cord and cowries, and makingcomments on the crowd in soft undertones which he alone seemed to catch. Her vivid and searching eyes, with their constant suggestion oflaughter, seemed to be picking out absurdities on every side and findingnearly everybody funny. 

She found me funny also. My innocence and my convent-bred ideas were aconstant subject of jest with her. 

"What does our dear little Margaret Mary think of that?" she would saywith a significant smile, at sights that seemed to me quite harmless. 

After a while I began to have a feeling of indefinable uneasiness aboutAlma. She was daily redoubling her cordiality, always calling me her"dearest sweetest girl, " and "the oldest friend she had in the world. "But little by little I became conscious of a certain commerce betweenher and my husband in which I had no part. Sometimes I saw her eyesseeking his, and occasionally I heard them exchange a few words about mein French, which (because I did not speak it, being uncertain of myaccent) they thought I did not understand. 

Perhaps this helped to sharpen my wits, for I began to see that I hadgone the wrong way to work with my husband. Instead of trying to makemyself fall in love with my husband, I should have tried to make myhusband fall in love with me. 

When I asked myself how this was to be done I found one obviousanswer--I must become the sort of woman my husband admired and liked; inshort I must imitate Alma. 

I resolved to do this, and after all that has happened since I feel alittle ashamed to tell of the efforts I made to play a part for which Iwas so ill-fitted by nature and education. 

Some of them were silly enough perhaps, but some were almost pathetic, and I am not afraid that any good woman will laugh at the futile shiftsI was put to, in my girlish ignorance, to make my husband love me. 

"I must do it, " I thought. "I must, I must!"

FORTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

Hitherto I had attended to myself, but now I determined to have a maid. I found one without much difficulty. Her name was Price. She was a veryplain woman of thirty, with piercing black eyes; and when I engaged hershe seemed anxious above all else to make me understand that she "neversaw anything. "

I soon discovered that she saw everything, especially the relationsbetween myself and my husband, and that she put her own interpretation(not a very flattering one) on our separated apartments. She also sawthe position of Alma, and putting her own interpretation upon that also, she tortured me with many pin-pricks. 

Under the guidance of my maid I began to haunt the shops of thedressmakers, the milliners and the jewellers. It did not require thememory of my father's letter to make me spend his money--I spent it likewater. Feeling ashamed of my quaker-cut costumes (Alma had a costume forevery day of the week, and wore a large gold snake on her arm), I boughtthe most costly toilettes, and loaded myself with bracelets, rings andnecklaces. 

I was dressing for my husband, and for him I did many things I had neverdreamt of doing before. For him I filed my nails, put cream on my skin, perfume on my handkerchief, and even rouge on my lips. Although I didnot allow myself to think of it so, I was running a race with Alma. 

My maid knew that before I did, and the first night she put me into oneof my uncomfortable new gowns she stood off from me and said:

"His lordship must be a strange gentleman if he can resist you _now_. "

I felt ashamed, yet pleased too, and went downstairs with a certainconfidence. 

The result was disappointing. My husband smiled rather condescendingly, and though Alma praised me beyond measure I saw that she was secretlylaughing as she said:

"Our Margaret Mary is coming out, isn't she?"

Nevertheless I persevered. Without too much preparation for so perilousan enterprise, I threw myself into the gaieties of Cairo, attending polomatches, race-meetings, picnics at the Pyramids, dances at the differenthotels, and on the island of Roda, where according to tradition, Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. 

I think I may say that I drew the eyes of other men upon me, particularly those of the colonel commanding on the Citadel, a fine typeof Scotsman, who paid me the most worshipful attention. But I thought ofnobody but my husband, being determined to make him forget Alma and fallin love with me. 

It was a hopeless task, and I had some heart-breaking hours. One day, calling at a jeweller's to see a diamond necklace which I greatlycoveted, I was told in confidence that my husband had been pricing it, but had had to give it up because it was a thousand francs too dear forhim. I was foolish enough to pay the thousand francs myself, under apledge of secrecy, and to tell the jeweller to send the necklace to myhusband, feeling sure in my simplicity that it had been meant for me. 

Next night I saw it on Alma's neck, and could have died of mortificationand shame. 

I daresay it was all very weak and very childish, but I really think mylast attempt, if rather ridiculous, was also very pitiful. 

Towards the end of our stay the proprietors of the hotel gave aCotillon. As this was the event of the season, and nearly every womanwas giving a dinner in honour of it, I resolved that I too would giveone, inviting the gayest of the gay acquaintances I had made in Cairo. 

Feeling that it would be my last battle, and that so much depended uponit, I dressed myself with feverish care, in a soft white satin gown, which was cut lower than I had ever worn before, with slippers to match, a tight band of pearls about my throat and another about my head. 

When Price had finished dressing me she said:

"Well, if his lordship prefers anybody else in the world to-night Ishan't know where he puts his eyes. "

The compliment was a crude one, but I had no time to think of that, formy heart was fluttering with hopes and fears, and I think any womanwould forgive me under the circumstances if I told myself, as I passedthe tall mirrors on the stairs, that I too was beautiful. 

The dining-room was crowded when I entered it with my guests, and seeingthat we were much observed it flashed upon me that my husband and I hadbecome a subject of gossip. Partly for that reason I strangled the uglything that was writhing in my bosom, and put Alma (who had flown to mewith affectionate rapture) next to my husband, and the colonelcommanding on the Citadel in the seat beside me. 

Throughout the dinner, which was very long, I was very nervous, andthough I did my best to keep up conversation with the colonel, I knewquite well that I was listening to what was being said at the other sideof my big round table, and as often as any mention was made of "MargaretMary" I heard it. 

More than once Alma lifted her glass with a gracious nod and smile, crying, "Mary dearest!" and then in another moment gave my husband oneof her knowing glances which seemed to me to say, "Look at that foolishlittle wife of yours!"

By the time we returned to the hall for coffee we were rather a noisyparty, and even the eyes of the ladies betrayed the fact that they haddined. The talk, which had grown louder, was also a little more free, and God forgive me, I joined in it, being feverishly anxious to outdoAlma, and be looked upon as a woman of the world. 

Towards eleven o'clock, the red-coated orchestra began to play a waltz, and then the whole variegated company of ladies, soldiers, and diplomatsstood up to dance, and the colonel asked me to join him. 

I was ashamed to tell him that I had never danced except with aschoolgirl, so I took his hand and started. But hardly had we begun, when I made mistakes, which I thought everybody saw (I am sure Alma sawthem), and before we had taken many turns my partner had to stop, whereupon I retired to my seat with a forced laugh and a sense ofconfusion. 

It was nearly twelve when they began the Cotillon, which Alma and myhusband led with supreme self-possession. As one of the hostesses I satin the front row of the square, and when I was taken out I made furthermistakes, which also Alma saw and communicated by smiles to my husband. 

Before the Cotillon came to an end the night was far spent and then thecompany, which had become very boisterous, began to look for some newexcitement, no matter how foolish. One or other started "turkey trot"and "grizzly bear" and finally Alma, with memories of the winter sportsat St. Moritz, proposed that they should toboggan down the greatstaircase. 

The suggestion was welcomed with a shout, and a broad board wasimmediately laid on the first long flight of stairs for people to slideon. 

Soldiers went first, and then there were calls for the ladies, when Almatook her turn, tucking her dress under her at the top and alightingsafely on her feet at the bottom. Other ladies followed her example, with similar good fortune, and then Alma, who had been saying "Such fun!Such lots of fun!" set up a cry of "Margaret Mary. "

I refused at first, feeling ashamed of even looking at such unwomanlyfolly, but something Alma said to my husband and something that wasconveyed by my husband's glance at me set my heart afire and, poorfeverish and entangled fool that I was, I determined to defy them. 

So running up to the top and seating myself on the toboggan I set it inmotion. But hardly had I done so when it swayed, reeled, twisted andthrew me off, with the result that I rolled downstairs to the bottom. 

Of course there were shrieks of laughter, and if I had been in thespirit of the time and place I suppose I should have laughed too, andthere would have been an end of the matter. But I had been playing apart, a tragic part, and feeling that I had failed and covered myselfwith ridicule, I was overwhelmed with confusion. 

I thought my husband would be angry with me, and feel compromised by myfoolishness, but he was not; he was amused, and when at last I saw hisface it was running in rivulets from the laughter he could not restrain. 

That was the end of all things, and when Alma came up to me, sayingeverything that was affectionate and insincere, about her "poor dearunfortunate Margaret Mary" (only women know how to wound each other so), I brushed her aside, went off to my bedroom, and lay face down on thesofa, feeling that I was utterly beaten and could fight no more. 

Half an hour afterwards my husband came in, and though I did not look upI heard him say, in a tone of indulgent sympathy that cut me to thequick:

"You've been playing the wrong part, my child. A Madonna, yes, but aVenus, no! It's not your _métier_. "

"What's the good? What's the good? What's the good?" I asked myself. 

I thought my heart was broken. 

FORTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

With inexpressible relief I heard the following day that we were toleave for Rome immediately. 

Alma was to go with us, but that did not matter to me in the least. Outside the atmosphere of this place, so artificial, so unrelated tonature, her power over my husband would be gone. Once in the Holy Cityeverything would be different. Alma would be different, I should bedifferent, above all my husband would be different. I should take him tothe churches and basilicas; I should show him the shrines and papalprocessions, and he would see me in my true "part" at last!

But what a deep disappointment awaited me!

On reaching Rome we put up at a fashionable hotel in the new quarter ofthe Ludovisi, and although that was only a few hundred yards from thespot on which I had spent nine happy years it seemed to belong toanother world altogether. Instead of the church domes and the monasterybells, there were the harsh clang of electric trams, the thrum and throbof automobiles, the rattle of cars and the tramp of soldiers. 

Then I realised that there were two Romes--an old Rome and a new one, and that the Rome we had come to hardly differed from the Cairo we hadleft behind. 

There was the same varied company of people of all nations, English, Americans, French, German; the same nomad tribes of the rich anddissolute, pitching their tents season by season in the sunny resorts ofEurope; the same aimless society, the same debauch of fashion, the samecallous and wicked luxury, the same thirst for selfish pleasures, thesame busy idleness, the same corruption of character and sex. 

This made me very unhappy, but from first to last Alma was in thehighest spirits. Everybody seemed to be in Rome that spring, andeverybody seemed to be known either to her or to my husband. For Alma'ssake we were invited everywhere, and thus we saw not only the life ofthe foreign people of the hotels but that of a part (not the betterpart) of the Roman aristocracy. 

Alma was a great success. She had the homage of all the men, and beingunderstood to be rich, and having the gift of making every man believehe was her special favourite, she was rarely without a group of Italiannoblemen about her chair. 

With sharper eyes the Italian women saw that her real reckoning lay withmy husband, but they seemed to think no worse of her for that. Theyseemed to think no worse of him either. It was nothing against him that, having married me (as everybody appeared to know) for the settlement ofhis financial difficulties, he had transferred his attentions, even onhis honeymoon, to this brilliant and alluring creature. 

As for me, I was made to realise that I was a person of a differentclass altogether. When people wished to be kind they called me_spirituelle_, and when they were tempted to be the reverse they votedme insipid. 

As a result I became very miserable in this company, and I can wellbelieve that I may have seemed awkward and shy and stupid when I was insome of their grey old palaces full of tapestry and bronze, for Isometimes found the talk there so free (especially among the women) thatthe poisoned jokes went quivering through me. 

Things I had been taught to think sacred were so often derided that Ihad to ask myself if it could be Rome, my holy and beloved Rome--thiscity of license and unbelief. 

But Alma was entirely happy, especially when the talk turned on conjugalfidelity, and the faithful husband was held up to ridicule. Thishappened very often in one house we used to go to--that of a Countess ofancient family who was said to have her husband and her lover at eitherside of her when she sat down to dinner. 

She was a large and handsome person of middle age, with a great mass offair hair, and she gave me the feeling that in her case the body of awoman was inhabited by the soul of a man. 

She christened me her little Irish _bambino_, meaning her child; and onenight in her drawing-room, after dinner, before the men had joined us, she called me to her side on the couch, lit a cigarette, crossed herlegs, and gave us with startling candour her views of the marriage bond. 

"What can you expect, you women?" she said. "You run after the men fortheir titles--they've very little else, except debts, poor things--andwhat is the result? The first result is that though you have bought themyou belong to them. Yes, your husband owns his beautiful woman, just ashe owns his beautiful horse or his beautiful dog. "

This was so pointed that I felt my face growing crimson, but Alma andthe other women only laughed, so the Countess went on:

"What then? Once in a blue moon each goes his and her own way withoutsin. You agree to a sort of partnership for mutual advantage in whichyou live together in chastity under the same roof. What a life! What anice-house!"

Again the other women laughed, but I felt myself blushing deeply. 

"But in the majority of cases it is quite otherwise. The businesspurpose served, each is open to other emotions. The man becomesunfaithful, and the woman, if she has any spirit, pays him out tit fortat--and why shouldn't she?"

After that I could bear no more, and before I knew what I was saying Iblurted out:

"But I find that wrong and wicked. Infidelity on the part of the mandoes not justify infidelity in the woman. The prayer-book says so. "

Alma burst out laughing, and the Countess smiled and continued:

"Once in a hundred years there comes a great passion--Dante andBeatrice, Petrarch and Laura. The woman meets the right man too late. What a tragedy! What a daily and hourly crucifixion! Unless, " said theCountess with emphasis, "she is prepared to renounce the law and rejectsociety and live a life of complete emancipation. But in a Catholiccountry, where there is no divorce, what woman can afford to do that?Nobody in the higher classes can--especially if she has to sacrifice hertitle. So the wise woman avoids scandal, keeps her little affair withher lover to herself, and . . . And that's marriage, my dears. "

A twitter of approval, led by Alma, came from the other women, but I wasquivering with anger and I said:

"Then marriage is an hypocrisy and an imposture. If I found I lovedsomebody better than my husband, I should go to him in spite of the law, and society, and title and . . . And everything. "

"Of course you would, my dear, " said the Countess, smiling at me as at achild, "but that's because you are such a sweet, simple, innocent littleIrish _bambino_. "

It must have been a day or two after this that we were invited to theRoman Hunt. I had no wish to go, but Alma who had begun to use me inorder to "save her face" in relation to my husband, induced me to drivethem out in a motor-car to the place on the Campagna where they were tomount their horses. 

"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "How could we possibly go without you?"

It was Sunday, and I sat between Alma in her riding habit and my husbandin his riding breeches, while we ran through the Porta San Giovanni, andpast the _osterie_ where the pleasure-loving Italian people were playingunder the pergolas with their children, until we came to themeeting-ground of the Hunt, by the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane. 

A large company of the Roman aristocracy were gathered there with theirhorses and hounds, and they received Alma and my husband with greatcordiality. What they thought of me I do not know, except that I was achildish and complacent wife; and when at the sound of the horn the huntbegan, and my husband and Alma went prancing off with the rest, withoutonce looking back, I asked myself in my shame and distress if I couldbear my humiliation much longer. 

But then came a moment of unexpected pleasure. A cheerful voice on theother side of the car said:

"Good morning, Lady Raa. "

It was the young Irish doctor from the steamer. His ship had put intoNaples for two days, and, like Martin Conrad before my marriage, he hadrun up to look at Rome. 

"But have you heard the news?" he cried. 

"What news?"

"About the South Pole Expedition--they're on their way home. "

"So soon?"

"Yes, they reached New Zealand on Saturday was a week. "

"And . . . And . . . And Martin Conrad?"

"He's well, and what's better, he has distinguished himself. "

"I . . . I . . . I knew he would. "

"So did I! The way I was never fearing that if they gave Mart half achance he would come out top! Do or die--that was his watch-word. "

"I know! I know!"

His eyes were sparkling and so I suppose were mine, while with a joyousrush of racy words, (punctuated by me with "Yes, " "Yes, " "Yes") he toldof a long despatch from the Lieutenant published by one of the Londonpapers, in which Martin had been specially mentioned--how he had beenput in command of some difficult and perilous expedition, and had workedwonders. 

"How splendid! How glorious! How perfectly magnificent!" I said. 

"Isn't it?" said the doctor, and for a few moments more we bandied quickquestions and replies like children playing at battledore andshuttlecock. Then he said:

"But I'm after thinking it's mortal strange I never heard him mentionyou. There was only one chum at home he used to talk about and that wasa man--a boy, I mean. Mally he was calling him--that's short forMaloney, I suppose. "

"For Mary, " I said. 

"Mary, is it? Why, by the saints, so it is! Where in the name of St. Patrick has been the Irish head at me that I never thought of thatbefore? And you were . . . Yes? Well, by the powers, ye've a right to beproud of him, for he was thinking pearls and diamonds of you. I wasmortal jealous of Mally, I remember. 'Mally's a stunner, ' he used tosay. 'Follow you anywhere, if you wanted it, in spite of the devil andhell. '"

The sparkling eyes were growing misty by this time but the woman in memade me say--I couldn't help it--

"I dare say he's had many girl friends since my time, though?"

"Narra a one. The girls used to be putting a glime on him inDublin--they're the queens of the world too, those Dublin girls--butnever a skute of the eye was he giving to the one of them. I used tothink it was work, but maybe it wasn't . . . Maybe it was. . . . "

I dare not let him finish what I saw he was going to say--I didn't knowwhat would happen to me if he did--so I jumped in by telling him that, if he would step into the car, I would drive him back to Rome. 

He did so, and all the way he talked of Martin, his courage and resourceand the hardships he had gone through, until (with backward thoughts ofAlma and my husband riding away over the Campagna) my heart, which hadbeen leaping like a lamb, began to ache and ache. 

We returned by the Old Appian Way, where the birds were building theirnests among the crumbling tombs, through the Porta San Paolo, and pastthe grave of the "young English poet" of whom I have always thought itwas not so sad that he died of consumption as in the bitterness of abroken heart. 

All this time I was so much at home with the young Irish doctor, who wasMartin's friend, that it was not until I was putting him down at hishotel that I remembered I did not even know his name. 

It was O'Sullivan. 

FORTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

Every day during our visit to Rome I had reminded myself of the ReverendMother's invitation to call on her, and a sense of moral taint hadprevented me, but now I determined to see her at least by going toBenediction at her Convent church the very next day. 

It happened, however, that this was the time when the Artists' Club ofRome were giving a Veglione (a kind of fancy-dress ball), and as Almaand my husband desired to go to it, and were still in the way of usingme to keep themselves in countenance, I consented to accompany them oncondition that I did not dress or dance, and that they would go with meto Benediction the following day. 

"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "We'll do whatever you like. Of course wewill. "

I wore my soft satin without any ornaments, and my husband merely putscarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but Alma was clad ina gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts which showed herlimbs in front but had a long train behind, and made her look like agreat vampire bat. 

It was eleven o'clock before we reached the theatre, but already theauditorium was full, and so well had the artists done their work ofdecoration, making the air alive with floating specks of many-colouredlights, like the fire-flies at Nemi, that the scene was one ofenchantment. 

It was difficult to believe that on the other side of the walls was thestreet, with the clanging electric bells and people hurrying by withtheir collars up, for the night was cold, and it had begun to rain as wecame in, and one poor woman, with a child under her shawl, was standingby the entrance trying to sell evening papers. 

I sat alone in a box on the ground tier while Alma and my husband andtheir friends were below on the level of the _poltroni_ (the stalls)that had been arranged for the dancing, which began immediately after wearrived and went on without a break until long after midnight. 

Then there was supper on the stage, and those who did not eat drank agood deal until nearly everybody seemed to be under the influence ofalcohol. As a consequence many of the people, especially some of thewomen (not good women I fear), seemed to lose all control of themselves, singing snatches of noisy songs, sipping out of the men's glasses, taking the smoke of cigarettes out of the men's mouths, sitting on themen's knees, and even riding astride on the men's arms and shoulders. 

I bore these sights as long as I could, making many fruitless appeals tomy husband to take me home; and I was just about to leave of myself, being sick of the degradation of my sex, when a kind of rostrum, with anempty chair on top of it, was carried in on the shoulders of a number ofmen. 

This was for the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty, and as it passedround the arena, with the mock judges in paper coronets, walking aheadto make their choice, some of the women, lost to all sense of modesty, were shouting "Take _me_! Take _me_!"

I felt sure they would take Alma, so I reached forward to get a betterview of her, where she stood below my box; but as they approached her, with the chair still empty, I saw her make a movement in my directionand say something to the judges about "the little nun, " which made myhusband nod his head and then laugh uproariously. 

At the next moment, before I knew what they were doing, six or seven menjumped into my box, lifted me on to the rostrum and placed me in thechair, whereupon the whole noisy company in the theatre broke into wildshouts of salutation and pelted me with flowers and confetti. 

If there was any pride there was more mortification in the position towhich Alma and my husband had exposed me, for as I was being carriedround the arena, with the sea of foaming faces below me, all screamingout of their hot and open mouths, I heard the men cry:

"Smile, Signorina!"

"Not so serious, Mademoiselle!"

It would do no good to say what memories of other scenes flashed backon my mind as I was being borne along in the mad procession. I felt asif it would last for ever. But it came to an end at length, and as soonas I was released, I begged my husband again to take me home, and whenhe said, "Not yet; we'll all be going by-and-by, " I stole away bymyself, found a cab, and drove back to the hotel. 

The day was dawning as I passed through the stony streets, and when Ireached my room, and pulled down my dark green blinds, the bell of theCapuchin monastery in the Via Veneto was ringing and the monks weresaying the first of their offices. 

I must have been some time in bed, hiding my hot face in thebed-clothes, when Price, my maid, came in to apologise for not havingseen me come back alone. The pain of the woman's scrutiny was more thanI could bear at that moment, so I tried to dismiss her, but I could notget her to go, and at last she said:

"If you please, my lady, I want to say something. "

I gave her no encouragement, yet she continued. 

"I daresay it's as much as my place is worth, but I'm bound to say it. "

Still I said nothing, yet she went on:

"His Lordship and Madame have also arrived. . . . They came back half anhour ago. And just now . . . I saw his lordship . . . Coming out ofMadame's room. "

"Go away, woman, go away, " I cried in the fierce agony of my shame, andshe went out at last, closing the door noisily behind her. 

 * * * * *

We did not go next day to Benediction at the Reverend Mother's church. But late the same night, when it was quite dark, I crept out of my roominto the noisy streets, hardly knowing where my footsteps were leadingme, until I found myself in the piazza of the Convent of the SacredHeart. 

It was quiet enough there. Only the Carabinieri were walking on thepaved way with measured steps, and the bell of the Dominican monasterywas slowly ringing under the silent stars. I could see the light on thePope's loggia at the Vatican and hear the clock of St. Peter's strikingnine. 

There were lights in the windows of some of the dormitories also, and bythat I knew that the younger children, the children of the Infant Jesus, were going to bed. There was a light too, in the large window of thechurch, and that told me that the bigger girls were saying their nightprayers. 

Creeping close to the convent wall I heard the girls' voices rising andfalling, and then through the closed door of the church came the muffledsound of their evening hymn--

 "_Ave maris stella Dei Mater Alma--_"

I did not know why I was putting myself wilfully to this bitterpain--the pain of remembering the happy years in which I myself was agirl singing so, and then telling myself that other girls were there nowwho knew nothing of me. 

I thought of the Reverend Mother, and then of my own mother, my saint, my angel, who had told me to think of her when I sang that hymn; andthen I remembered where I was and what had happened to me. 

 "_Virgin of all virgins, To thy shelter take me_. "

I felt like an outcast. A stifling sensation came into my throat and Idropped to my knees in the darkness. I thought I was broken-hearted. 

FORTY-NINTH CHAPTER

Not long after that we left Italy on our return to England. We were toreach home by easy stages so as to see some of the great capitals ofEurope, but I had no interest in the journey. 

Our first stay was at Monte Carlo, that sweet garden of theMediterranean which God seems to smile upon and man to curse. 

If I had been allowed to contemplate the beautiful spectacle of nature Ithink I could have been content, but Alma, with her honeyed andinsincere words, took me to the Casino on the usual plea of keeping herin countenance. 

I hated the place from the first, with its stale air, its chink of louisd'or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about the tables, andits general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears and needless misery anddespair. 

As often as I could I crept out to look at the flower fêtes in thestreets, or to climb the hill of La Turbie and think I was on my nativerocks with Martin Conrad, or even to sit in my room and watch the poorwounded pigeons from the pigeon-traps as they tumbled and ducked intothe sea after the shots fired, by cruel and unsportsmanlike sportsmen, from the rifle-range below. 

In Monte Carlo my husband's vices seemed to me to grow rank and fast. The gambling fever took complete possession of him. At first he won andthen he drank heavily, but afterwards he lost and then his nature becamestill more ugly and repulsive. 

One evening towards eight o'clock, I was in my room, trying to comfort abroken-winged pigeon which had come floundering through the open window, when my husband entered with wild eyes. 

"The red's coming up at all the tables, " he cried breathlessly. "Give mesome money, quick!"

I told him I had no money except the few gold pieces in my purse. 

"You've a cheque book--give me a cheque, then. "

I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it thatnight, the banks being closed. 

"The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven't you? Stopfooling with that creature, and let me have some of them to pawn. "

The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the drawerin which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what he wantedand went out hurriedly without more words. 

After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black ringsabout his eyes he came in to say he must leave "this accursed place"immediately or we should all be ruined. 

Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the greatFrench capital which has done so much for the world, I thought it mustbe the sink of every kind of corruption. 

We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elysées, and there (aswell as in the cafés in the Bois and at the races at Longchamps onSundays) we met the same people again, most of them English andAmericans on their way home after the winter. It seemed to me strangethat there should be so many men and women in the world with nothing todo, merely loafing round it like tramps--the richest being the idlest, and the idlest the most immoral. 

My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think hespent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at Alma'sinstigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by night. 

"It will be lots of fun, " said Alma. "And then who is to know us inplaces like those?"

I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be draggedaround any longer as a cloak for Alma's pleasures. Telling myself thatif I continued to share my husband's habits of life, for any reason orunder any pretext, I should become like him, and my soul would rot inchby inch, I resolved to be clean in my own eyes and to resist thecontaminations of his company. 

As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma made noefforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last that they wenttogether to a scandalous entertainment which was for a while the talk ofthe society papers throughout Europe. 

I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned fromthose sources--that it was given by a notorious woman, who was not shutout of society because she was "the good friend" of a King; that she didthe honours with clever imitative elegance; that her salon that nightwas crowded with such male guests as one might see at the court of aqueen--princes, dukes, marquises, counts, English noblemen and membersof parliament, as well as some reputable women of my own and othercountries; that the tables were laid for supper at four o'clock withevery delicacy of the season and wines of the rarest vintage; that aftersupper dancing was resumed with increased animation; and that thedazzling and improper spectacle terminated with a _Chaîne diabolique_ atseven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the windows andthe bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for early mass. 

I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at theMadeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing producedupon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment when--the prieststanding at the foot of the altar--the choir sang the _Kyrie eleison_, down to the solemn silence of the elevation, I had a sense of beingwashed from all the taint of the contaminating days since my marriage. 

The music was Perosi's, I remember, and the voices in the _Gloria inexcelsis_, which I used to sing myself, seemed to carry up the cry of mysorrowful heart to the very feet of the Virgin whose gracious figurehung above me. 

"Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God. "

It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of thechurch and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling ofpurity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the SacredHeart. 

It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of earlymorning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem to blush inthe sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs Elysées on my way back to thehotel, I met under the chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, alittle company of young girls returning to school after their firstcommunion. 

How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes andstockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white flowers, theywere twittering away as merrily as the little birds that were singingunseen in the leaves above them. 

It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; butturning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the greatand holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me suchstrength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure inmy walk through the world with charity and forgiveness. 

But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in the firesof passion!

As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband's bedroomfrom mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently at myhusband's closed door. This seemed to me so improper that I wasbeginning to reprove her, when she put her finger to her lip and comingover to me with her black eyes ablaze she said:

"I know you will pack me off for what I'm going to say, yet I can't helpthat. You've stood too much already, my lady, but if you are a woman andhave any pride in yourself as a wife, go and listen at that door and seeif you can stand any more. "

With that she went out of the salon, and I tried to go to my own room, but I could not stir. Something held me to the spot on which I stood, and I found myself listening to the voices which I could distinctly hearin my husband's bedroom. 

There were two voices, one a man's, loud and reckless, the other awoman's soft and cautious. 

There was no need to tell myself whose voices they were, and neither didI ask myself any questions. I did not put to my mind the pros and consof the case for myself or the case for my husband. I only thought andfelt and behaved as any other wife would think and feel and behave atsuch a moment. An ugly and depraved thing, which my pride or myself-respect had never hitherto permitted me to believe in, suddenlyleapt into life. 

I was outraged. I was a victim of the treachery, the duplicity, thedisloyalty, and the smothered secrecy of husband and friend. 

My heart and soul were aflame with a sense of wrong. All the sweeteningand softening and purifying effects of the sacrament were gone in aninstant, and, moving stealthily across the carpet towards my husband'sdoor, I swiftly turned the handle. 

The door was locked. 

I heard a movement inside the room and in a moment I hurried from thesalon into the corridor, intending to enter by another door. As I wasabout to do so I heard the lock turned back by a cautious hand within. Then I swung the door open and boldly entered the room. 

Nobody was there except my husband. 

But I was just in time to catch the sound of rustling skirts in theadjoining apartment and to see a door closed gently behind them. 

I looked around. Although the sun was shining, the blinds were down andthe air was full of a rank odour of stale tobacco such as might havebeen brought back in people's clothes from that shameless woman's salon. 

My husband, who had clearly been drinking, was looking at me with ahalf-senseless grin. His thin hair was a little disordered. Hisprominent front teeth showed hideously. I saw that he was trying tocarry things off with an air. 

"This _is_ an unexpected pleasure. I think it must be the firsttime . . . The very first time that. . . . "

I felt deadly cold; I almost swooned; I could scarcely breathe, but Isaid:

"Is that all you've got to say to me?"

"All? What else, my dear? I don't understand. . . . "

"You understand quite well, " I answered, and then looking towards thedoor of the adjoining apartment, I said, "both of you understand. "

My husband began to laugh--a drunken, idiotic laugh. 

"Oh, you mean that . . . Perhaps you imagine that. . . . "

"Listen, " I said. "This is the end of everything between you and me. "

"The end? Why, I thought that was long ago. In fact I thought everythingended before it began. "

"I mean. . . . " I knew I was faltering . . . "I mean that I can nolonger keep up the farce of being your wife. "

"Farce!" Again he laughed. "I congratulate you, my dear. Farce isexactly the word for it. Our relations have been a farce ever since theday we were married, and if anything has gone wrong you have onlyyourself to blame for it. What's a man to do whose wife is no companyfor anybody but the saints and angels?"

His coarse ridicule cut me to the quick. I was humiliated by the thoughtthat after all in his own gross way my husband had something to say forhimself. 

Knowing I was no match for him I wanted to crawl away without anotherword. But my silence or the helpless expression of my face must havebeen more powerful than my speech, for after a few seconds in which hewent on saying in his drawling way that I had been no wife to him, andif anything had happened I had brought it on myself, he stopped, andneither of us spoke for a moment. 

Then feeling that if I stayed any longer in that room I should faint, Iturned to go, and he opened the door for me and bowed low, perhaps inmockery, as I passed out. 

When I reached my own bedroom I was so weak that I almost dropped, andso cold that my maid had to give me brandy and put hot bottles to myfeet. 

And then the tears came and I cried like a child. 

FIFTIETH CHAPTER

I was far from well next morning and Price wished to keep me in bed, butI got up immediately when I heard that my husband was talking ofreturning to London. 

Our journey was quite uneventful. We three sat together in the railwaycarriage and in the private cabin on the steamer, with no other companythan Bimbo, my husband's terrier, and Prue, Alma's Pekinese spaniel. 

Although he made no apology for his conduct of the day before my husbandwas quiet and conciliatory, and being sober he looked almost afraid, asif telling himself that he might have to meet my father soon--the oneman in the world of whom he seemed to stand in fear. 

Alma looked equally frightened, but she carried off her nervousness witha great show of affection, saying she was sorry I was feeling "badly, "that France and the South did not agree with me, and that I should beever so much better when I was "way up north. "

We put up at a well-known hotel near Trafalgar Square, the same that inour girlhood had been the subject of Alma's dreams of future bliss, andI could not help observing that while my husband was selecting our roomsshe made a rather ostentatious point of asking for an apartment onanother floor. 

It was late when we arrived, so I went to bed immediately, being alsoanxious to be alone that I might think out my course of action. 

I was then firmly resolved that one way or other my life with my husbandshould come to an end; that I would no longer be befouled by the mire hehad been dragging me through; that I should live a clean life and drinka pure draught, and oh, how my very soul seemed to thirst for it!

This was the mood in which I went to sleep, but when I awoke in themorning, almost before the dawn, the strength of my resolution ebbedaway. I listened to the rumble of the rubber-bound wheels of thecarriages and motor-cars that passed under my window and, rememberingthat I had not a friend in London, I felt small and helpless. What couldI do alone? Where could I turn for assistance?

Instinctively I knew it would be of no use to appeal to my father, forthough it was possible that he might knock my husband down, it was notconceivable that he would encourage me to separate from him. 

In my loneliness and helplessness I felt like a shipwrecked sailor, who, having broken away from the foundering vessel that would have sucked himunder, is yet tossing on a raft with the threatening ocean on everyside, and looking vainly for a sail. 

At last I thought of Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, and decided tosend a telegram to him asking for the name of some solicitor in Londonto whom I could apply for advice. 

To carry out this intention I went down to the hall about nine o'clock, when people were passing into the breakfast-room, and visitors werecalling at the bureau, and livened page-boys were shouting names in thecorridors. 

There was a little writing-room at one side of the hall and I sat thereto write my telegram. It ran--

"Please send name and address reliable solicitor London whom I canconsult on important business. "

I was holding the telegraph-form in my hand and reading my message againand again to make sure that it would lead to no mischief, when I beganto think of Martin Conrad. 

It seemed to me that some one had mentioned his name, but I told myselfthat must have been a mistake, --that, being so helpless and so much inneed of a friend at that moment, my heart and not my ears had heard it. 

Nevertheless as I sat holding my telegraph-form I became conscious ofsomebody who was moving about me. It was a man, for I could smell thesweet peaty odour of his Harris tweeds. 

At length with that thrill which only the human voice can bring to uswhen it is the voice of one from whom we have been long parted, I heardsomebody say, from the other side of the desk:

"Mary, is it you?"

I looked up, the blood rushed to my face and a dazzling mist floatedbefore my eyes, so that for a moment I could hardly see who was there. But I _knew_ who it was--it was Martin himself. 

He came down on me like a breeze from the mountain, took me by bothhands, telegram and all, and said:

"My goodness, this is stunning!"

I answered, as well as I could for the confusion that overwhelmed me. 

"I'm so glad, so glad!"

"How well you are looking! A little thin, perhaps, but such a colour!"

"I'm so glad, so glad!" I repeated, though I knew I was only blushing. 

"When did you arrive?"

I told him, and he said:

"_We_ came into port only yesterday. And to think that you and I shouldcome to the same hotel and meet on the very first morning! It's like afate, as our people in the island say. But it's stunning, perfectlystunning!"

A warm tide of joy was coursing through me and taking away my breath, but I managed to say:

"I've heard about your expedition. You had great hardships. "

"That was nothing! Just a little pleasure-trip down to the eighty-sixthlatitude. "

"And great successes?"

"That was nothing either. The chief was jolly good, and the boys werebricks. "

"I'm so glad, so glad!" I said again, for a kind of dumb joy had takenpossession of me, and I went on saying the same thing over and overagain, as people do when they are very happy. 

For two full minutes I felt happier than I had ever been in my lifebefore; and then an icy chill came over me, for I remembered that I hadbeen married since I saw Martin Conrad last and I did not know how I wasto break the news to him. 

Just then my husband and Alma came down the lift, and seeing me with astranger, as they crossed the hall to go into the breakfast-room, theycame up and spoke. 

I had to introduce them and it was hard to do, for it was necessary toreveal everything in a word. I looked at Martin Conrad when I presentedhim to my husband and he did not move a muscle. Then I looked at myhusband and under a very small bow his face grew dark. 

I could not help seeing the difference between the two men as they stoodtogether--Martin with his sea-blue eyes and his look of splendid health, and my husband with his sallow cheeks and his appearance of wastedstrength--and somehow from some unsearchable depths of my soul thecontrast humbled me. 

When I introduced Alma she took Martin's hand and held it while shegazed searchingly into his eyes from under her eyebrows, as she alwaysdid when she was being presented to a man; but I saw that in thisinstance her glance fell with no more effect on its object than alighted vesta on a running stream. 

After the usual banal phrases my husband inquired if Martin was stayingin the house, and then asked if he would dine with us some day. 

"Certainly! Delighted! With all the pleasure in the world, " said Martin. 

"Then, " said my husband with rather frigid politeness, "you will seemore of your friend Mary. "

"Yes, " said Alma, in a way that meant much, "you will see more of yourfriend Mary. "

"Don't you worry about that, ma'am. You _bet_ I will, " said Martin, looking straight into Alma's eyes; and though she laughed as she passedinto the breakfast-room with my husband, I could see that for the firsttime in her life a man's face had frightened her. 

"Then you knew?" I said, when they were gone. 

"Yes; a friend of mine who met you abroad came down to see us into portand he . . . "

"Dr. O'Sullivan?"

"That's the man! Isn't he a boy? And, my gracious, the way he speaks ofyou! But now . . . Now you must go to breakfast yourself, and I must beoff about my business. "

"Don't go yet, " I said. 

"I'll stay all day if you want me to; but I promised to meet theLieutenant on the ship in half an hour, and . . . "

"Then you must go. "

"Not yet. Sit down again. Five minutes will do no harm. And by the way, now that I look at you again, I'm not so sure that you . . . Italy, Egypt, there's enough sun down there, but you're pale . . . A littlepale, aren't you?"

I tried to make light of my pallor but Martin looked uneasy, and after amoment he asked:

"How long are you staying in London?"

I told him I did not know, whereupon he said:

"Well, I'm to be here a month, making charts and tables and reports forthe Royal Geographical Society, but if you want me for anything . . . Doyou want me now?"

"No-o, no, not now, " I answered. 

"Well, if you _do_ want me for anything--anything at all, mind, justpass the word and the charts and the tables and the reports and theRoyal Geographical Society may go to the . . . Well, somewhere. "

I laughed and rose and told him he ought to go, though at the bottom ofmy heart I was wishing him to stay, and thinking how little and lonely Iwas, while here was a big brave man who could protect me from everydanger. 

We walked together to the door, and there I took his hand and held it, feeling, like a child, that if I let him go he might be lost in thehuman ocean outside and I should see no more of him. 

At last, struggling hard with a lump that was gathering in my throat, Isaid:

"Martin, I have been so happy to see you. I've never been so happy tosee anybody in my life. You'll let me see you again, won't you?"

"Won't I? Bet your life I will, " he said, and then, as if seeing that mylip was trembling and my eyes were beginning to fill, he broke into acheerful little burst of our native tongue, so as to give me a "heise"as we say in Ellan and to make me laugh at the last moment. 

"Look here--keep to-morrow for me, will ye? If them ones" (my husbandand Alma) "is afther axing ye to do anything else just tell them there'san ould shipmate ashore, and he's wanting ye to go 'asploring. ' See?So-long!"

It had been like a dream, a beautiful dream, and as soon as I came tomyself in the hall, with the visitors calling at the bureau and thepage-boys shouting in the corridors, I found that my telegraph-form, crumpled and crushed, was still in the palm of my left hand. 

I tore it up and went in to breakfast. 

FOURTH PART

I FALL IN LOVE

FIFTY-FIRST CHAPTER

During our first day in London my husband had many visitors, includingMr. Eastcliff and Mr. Vivian, who had much to tell and arrange about. 

I dare say a great many events had happened during our six months'absence from England; but the only thing I heard of was that Mr. Eastcliff had married his dancing-girl, that she had retired from thestage, and that her public appearances were now confined to the box-seatof a four-in-hand coach, which he drove from London to Brighton. 

This expensive toy he proposed to bring round to the hotel the followingday, which chanced to be Derby Day, when a party was to be made up forthe races. 

In the preparations for the party, Alma, who, as usual, attracteduniversal admiration, was of course included, but I did not observe thatany provision was made for me, though that circumstance did not distressme in the least, because I was waiting for Martin's message. 

It came early next morning in the person of Martin himself, who, runninginto our sitting-room like a breath of wind from the sea, said hisfellow officers were separating that day, each going to his own home, and their commander had invited me to lunch with them on their ship, which was lying off Tilbury. 

It did not escape me that my husband looked relieved at this news, andthat Alma's face brightened as she said in her most succulent tones:

"I should go if I were you, Mary. The breeze on the river will do you aworld of good, dear. "

I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go off intheir four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while with afast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with Martin, having, asI thought, so much and such serious things to say to him. 

A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the WestminsterPier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like another woman. It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our much-malignedLondon is the brightest and best, and the biggest city in the world isalso the most beautiful. 

How I loved it that day! The sunlight, the moving river, the soft air ofearly summer, the passing panorama of buildings, old and new--what a joyit was to me I sat on a side seat, dipping my hand over the gunwale intothe cool water, while Martin, with a rush of racy words, was pointingout and naming everything. 

St. Paul's was soon past, with the sun glistening off the golden crosson its dome; then London Bridge; then the Tower, with its Traitors'Gate; then the new Thames Bridge; and then we were in the region of thebarges and wharfs and warehouses, with their colliers and coastingtraders, and with the scum of coal and refuse floating on the surface ofthe stream. 

After that came uglier things still, which we did not mind, and then thegreat docks with the hammering of rivets and the cranking noise of thelightermen's donkey engines, loading and unloading the big steamers andsailing ships; and then the broad reaches of the river where the greatliners, looking so high as we steamed under them, lay at anchor to theirrusty cable-chains, with their port-holes gleaming in the sun like rowsof eyes, as Martin said, in the bodies of gigantic fish. 

At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on eitherside and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little to theflowing tide, and with a sea-gull floating over her mizzen mast, layMartin's ship. 

She was a wooden schooner, once a Dundee whaler called the _Mary_ butnow re-christened the _Scotia_, and it would be silly to say how my eyesfilled at sight of her, just because she had taken Martin down into thedeep Antarctic and brought him safely back again. 

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin. 

"Isn't she?" I answered, and in spite of all my troubles I felt entirelyhappy. 

We had steamed down against a strong tide, so we were half an hour latefor luncheon, and the officers had gone down to the saloon, but it wasworth being a little after time to see the way they all leapt up andreceived me like a queen--making me feel, as I never felt before, thedifference between the politeness of the fashionable idlers and themanners of the men who do things. 

"Holloa!" they cried. 

"Excuse us, won't you? We thought something had happened and perhaps youwere not coming, " said the commander, and then he put me to sit betweenhimself and Martin. 

The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a moment, and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed because I wasthe only member of my sex among so many men he does not know the heartof a woman. 

They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of health andthe sense of space about them--large space--as if they had come out ofthe heroic youth of the world, that they set my blood a-tingling to lookat them. 

They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood for thewomankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back to, but nonethe less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking the first fruitsof their love for them. 

So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been calledinsipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was chattering awaysoftly and happily, making remarks about the things around me and askingall sorts of questions. 

Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh very much;but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the world, becauseeverybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who served the dishes, and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney from Wapping, who forsome unexplained reason was called Treacle. 

It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying: "Isn'tthat so, Doctor?" or "Don't you agree, Doctor?" and though it wasstrange and new to hear Martin (my "Mart of Spitzbergen") called"Doctor, " it was also very charming. 

After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, thecommander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands whichhad been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus; and when itcame I was called upon to identify one by one, the shaggy, tousled, unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture with the smart, clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the table. 

Naturally I made shockingly bad shots, and the worst of them was when Iassociated Treacle with the commander, which made the latter rock inhis seat and the former shake and shout so much that he spilled thecoffee. 

"But what about the fourth man in the front row from the left?" askedthe commander. 

"Oh, I should recognise him if I were blindfolded, " I answered. 

"By what?"

"By his eyes, " I said, and after this truly Irish and feminine answerthe men shrieked with laughter. 

"She's got you there, doc, " cried somebody. 

"She has sure, " said Martin, who had said very little down to thatmoment, but was looking supremely happy. 

At length the time came for the men to go, and I went up on deck to seethem off by the launch, and then nobody was left on the ship exceptMartin and myself, with the cook, the cabin-boy and a few of the crew, including Treacle. 

I knew that that was the right time to speak, but I was too greedy ofevery moment of happiness to break in on it with the story of mytroubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I wentwith him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, andsledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, andthe double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleumand the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for themen's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for thedried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and theempty cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been sent up to theZoo to be taken care of. 

Last of all he showed me his own cabin, which interested me more thananything else, being such a snug little place (though I thought I shouldlike to tidy it up a bit), with his medical outfit, his books, his bedlike a shelf, and one pretty photograph of his mother's cottage with theroses growing over it, that I almost felt as if I would not mind goingto the Antarctic myself if I could live in such comfortable quarters. 

Two hours passed in this way, though they had flown like five minutes, when the cabin-boy came to say that tea was served in the saloon, andthen I skipped down to it as if the ship belonged to me. And no soonerhad I screwed myself into the commander's chair, which was fixed to thefloor at the head of the narrow table, and found the tea-tray almost onmy lap, than a wave of memory from our childhood came sweeping back onme, and I could not help giving way to the coquetry which lies hidden inevery girl's heart so as to find out how much Martin had been thinkingof me. 

"I'll bet you anything, " I said, (I had caught Martin's style) "youcan't remember where you and I first saw each other. "

He could--it was in the little dimity-white room in his mother's housewith its sweet-smelling "scraas" under the sloping thatch. 

"Well, you don't remember what you were doing when we held our firstconversation?"

He did--he was standing on his hands with his feet against the wall andhis inverted head close to the carpet. 

"But you've forgotten what happened next?"

He hadn't--I had invited William Rufus and himself into bed, and theyhad sat up on either side of me. 

Poor William Rufus! I heard at last what had become of him. He had diedof distemper soon after I was sent to school. His master had buried himin the back-garden, and, thinking I should be as sorry as he was for theloss of our comrade, he had set up a stone with an inscription in ourjoint names--all of his own inditing. It ran--he spelled it out to me--

 "HERE LICE WILYAM ROOFUS WRECKTED BY IZ OLE FRENS MARTIN CONRAD AND MARY O'NEILL. "

Two big blinding beads came into my eyes at that story, but they weresoon dashed away by Martin who saw them coming and broke into thevernacular. I broke into it, too, (hardly knowing that the well of mynative speech was still there until I began to tap it), and we talked ofTommy the Mate and his "starboard eye, " called each other "bogh mulish, "said things were "middling, " spoke of the "threes" (trees) and the"tunder" (thunder), and remembered that "our Big Woman was a wickeddevil and we wouldn't trust but she'd burn in hell. "

How we laughed! We laughed at everything; we laughed at nothing; welaughed until we cried; but I have often thought since that this waspartly because we knew in our secret hearts that we were always hoveringon the edge of tragic things. 

Martin never once mentioned my husband or my marriage, or his letters tomy father, the Bishop and Father Dan, which had turned out so terriblytrue; but we had our serious moments for all that, and one of them waswhen we were bending over a large chart which he had spread out on thetable to show me the course of the ship through the Great Unknown, leaning shoulder to shoulder, so close that our heads almost touched, and I could see myself in his eyes as he turned to speak to me. 

"You were a little under the weather yesterday, shipmate--what was thecause of it?" he asked. 

"Oh, we . . . We can talk of that another time, can't we?" I answered, and then we both laughed again, goodness knows why, unless it wasbecause we felt we were on the verge of unlocking the doors of eachother's souls. 

Oh that joyful, wonderful, heart-swelling day! But no day ever passed soquickly. At half-past six Martin said we must be going back, or I shouldbe late for dinner, and a few minutes afterwards we were in the launch, which had returned to fetch us. 

I had had such a happy time on the ship that as we were steaming off Ikissed my hand to her, whereupon Treacle, who was standing at the top ofthe companion, taking the compliment to himself, returned the salutewith affectionate interest, which sent Martin and me into our last wildshriek of laughter. 

The return trip was just as delightful as the coming out had been, everything looking different the other way round, for the sunset waslike a great celestial fire which had been lighted in the western sky, and the big darkening city seemed to have turned its face to it. 

Martin talked all the way back about a scheme he had afoot for goingdown to the region of the Pole again in order to set up some machinerythat was to save life and otherwise serve humanity, and while I satclose up to him, looking into his flashing eyes--they were still as blueas the bluest sea--I said, again and again: "How splendid! How glorious!What a great, great thing it will be for the world. "

"Won't it?" he said, and his eyes sparkled like a boy's. 

Thus the time passed without our being aware how it was going, and wewere back at Westminster Pier before I bethought me that of the sad andserious subject I had intended to speak about I had said nothing atall. 

But all London seemed to have been taking holiday that day, for as wedrove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full of happypeople were returning from the Derby, including costers' donkey carts inwhich the girls were carrying huge boughs of May blossom, and the boyswere wearing the girls' feathery hats, and at the top of their lustylungs they were waking the echoes of the stately avenue with the"Honeysuckle and the Bee. "

 "_Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee, Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see_. "

As we came near our hotel we saw a rather showy four-in-hand coach, called the "Phoebus, " drawing up at the covered way in front of it, anda lady on top, in a motor veil, waving her hand to us. 

It was Alma, with my husband's and Mr. Eastcliff's party back from theraces, and as soon as we met on the pavement she began to pay me highcompliments on my improved appearance. 

"Didn't I say the river air would do you good, dearest?" she said, andthen she added something else, which would have been very sweet if ithad been meant sweetly, about there being no surer way to make a girlbeautiful than to make her happy. 

There was some talk of our dining together that night, but I excusedmyself, and taking leave of Martin, who gave my hand a gentle pressure, I ran upstairs without waiting for the lift, being anxious to get to myown room that I might be alone and go over everything in my mind. 

I did so, ever so many times, recalling all that had been said and doneby the commander and his comrades, and even by Treacle, but above all byMartin, and laughing softly to myself as I lived my day over again in aworld of dream. 

My maid came in once or twice, with accounts of the gorgeous Derbydinner that was going on downstairs, but that did not matter to me inthe least, and as soon as I had swallowed a little food I went to bedearly--partly in order to get rid of Price that I might go overeverything again and yet again. 

I must have done so far into the night, and even when the wings of mymemory were weary of their fluttering and I was dropping off at last, Ithought I heard Martin calling "shipmate, " and I said "Yes, " quite loud, as if he had been with me still in that vague and beautiful shadow-landwhich lies on the frontier of sleep. 

How mysterious, how magical, how wonderful!

Looking back I cannot but think it strange that even down to that momentI did not really know what was happening to me, being only conscious ofa great flood of joy. I cannot but think it strange that, though Naturehad been whispering to me for months, I did not know what it had beensaying. I cannot but think it strange that, though I had been lookingfor love so long without finding it, I did not recognise it immediatelywhen it had come to me of itself. 

But when I awoke early in the morning, very early, while the sunrise wasfilling my bedroom with a rosy flush, and the thought of Martin was thefirst that was springing from the mists of sleep to my conscious mind, and I was asking myself how it happened that I was feeling so glad, while I had so many causes for grief, then suddenly--suddenly as the sunstreams through the cloud-scud over the sea--I knew that what had longbeen predestined had happened, that the wondrous new birth, the greatrevelation, the joyous mystery which comes to every happy woman in theworld had come at last to me. 

I was in love. 

I was in love with Martin Conrad. 

FIFTY-SECOND CHAPTER

My joy was short-lived. No sooner had I become aware that I loved MartinConrad, than my conscience told me I had no right to do so. I wasmarried, and to love another than my husband was sin. 

It would be impossible to say with what terror this thought possessedme. It took all the sunlight out of my sky, which a moment before hadseemed so bright. It came on me like a storm of thunder and lightning, sweeping my happiness into the abyss. 

All my religion, everything I had been taught about the sanctity of thesacrament of marriage seemed to rise up and accuse me. It was not that Iwas conscious of any sin against my husband. I was thinking only of mysin against God. 

The first effect was to make me realise that it was no longer possiblefor me to speak to Martin about my husband and Alma. To do this nowthat I knew I loved him would be deceitful, mean, almost treacherous. 

The next effect was to make me see that all thought of a separation mustnow be given up. How could I accuse my husband when I was myself in thesame position? If he loved another woman, I loved another man. 

In my distress and fright I saw only one means of escape either from thefilthy burden to which I was bound or the consciousness of a sinfulheart, and that was to cure myself of my passion. I determined to do so. I determined to fight against my love for Martin Conrad, to conquer itand to crush it. 

My first attempt to do this was feeble enough. It was an effort to keepmyself out of the reach of temptation by refusing to see Martin alone. 

For three or four days I did my best to carry out this purpose, makingone poor excuse after another, when (as happened several times a day) hecame down to see me--that I was just going out or had just come in, orwas tired or unwell. 

It was tearing my heart out to deny myself so, but I think I could haveborne the pain if I had not realised that I was causing pain to himalso. 

My maid, whose head was always running on Martin, would come hack to myroom, after delivering one of my lying excuses, and say:

"You should have seen his face, when I told him you were ill. It wasjust as if I'd driven a knife into him. "

Everybody seemed to be in a conspiracy to push me into Martin'sarms--Alma above all others. Being a woman she read my secret, and Icould see from the first that she wished to justify her own conduct inrelation to my husband by putting me into the same position with Martin. 

"Seen Mr. Conrad to-day?" she would ask. 

"Not to-day, " I would answer. 

"Really? And you such old friends! And staying in the same hotel, too!"

When she saw that I was struggling hard she reminded my husband of hisintention of asking Martin to dinner, and thereupon a night was fixedand a party invited. 

Martin came, and I was only too happy to meet him in company, though thepain and humiliation of the contrast between him and my husband and hisfriends, and the difference of the atmosphere in which he lived fromthat to which I thought I was doomed for ever, was almost more than Icould bear. 

I think they must have felt it themselves, for though their usualconversation was of horses and dogs and race-meetings, I noticed theywere silent while Martin in his rugged, racy poetic way (for allexplorers are poets) talked of the beauty of the great Polar night, thecloudless Polar day, the midnight calm and the moonlight on theglaciers, which was the loveliest, weirdest, most desolate, yet mostentrancing light the world could show. 

"I wonder you don't think of going back to the Antarctic, if it's sofascinating, " said Alma. 

"I do. Bet your life I do, " said Martin, and then he told them what hehad told me on the launch, but more fully and even more rapturously--thestory of his great scheme for saving life and otherwise benefitinghumanity. 

For hundreds of years man, prompted merely by the love of adventure, thepraise of achievement, and the desire to know the globe he lived on, hadbeen shouldering his way to the hitherto inviolable regions of thePoles; but now the time had come to turn his knowledge to account. 

"How?" said my husband. 

"By putting himself into such a position, " said Martin, "that he will beable to predict, six, eight, ten days ahead, the weather of a vast partof the navigable and habitable world--by establishing installations ofwireless telegraphy as near as possible to the long ice-barrier aboutthe Pole from which ice-floes and icebergs and blizzards come, so thatwe can say in ten minutes from the side of Mount Erebus to half thesouthern hemisphere, 'Look out. It's coming down, ' and thus savemillions of lives from shipwreck, and hundreds of millions of money. "

"Splendid, by Jove!" said Mr. Eastcliff. 

"Yes, ripping, by jingo!" said Mr. Vivian. 

"A ridiculous dream!" muttered my husband, but not until Martin hadgone, and then Alma, seeing that I was all aglow, said:

"What a lovely man! I wonder you don't see more of him, Mary, my love. He'll be going to the ends of the earth soon, and then you'll be sorryyou missed the chance. "

Her words hurt me like the sting of a wasp, but I could not resist them, and when some days later Martin called to take me to the GeographicalSociety, where his commander, Lieutenant ---- was to give an account oftheir expedition, I could not find it in my heart to refuse to go. 

Oh, the difference of this world from that in which I had been livingfor the past six months! All that was best in England seemed to bethere, the men who were doing the work of the world, and the women whowere their wives and partners. 

The theatre was like the inside of a dish, and I sat by Martin's side onthe bottom row of seats, just in front of the platform and face to facewith the commander. 

His lecture, which was illustrated by many photographic lantern slidesof the exploring party, (including the one that had been shown to me onthe ship) was very interesting, but terribly pathetic; and when hedescribed the hardships they had gone through in a prolonged blizzard ona high plateau, with food and fuel running low, and no certainty thatthey would ever see home again, I found myself feeling for Martin's handto make sure that he was there. 

Towards the end the commander spoke very modestly of himself, saying hecould never have reached the 87th parallel if he had not had a crew ofthe finest comrades that ever sailed on a ship. 

"And though they're all splendid fellows, " he said, "there's one I canspecially mention without doing any wrong to the rest, and that's theyoung doctor of our expedition--Martin Conrad. Martin has a scheme ofhis own for going down to the Antarctic again to make a great experimentin the interests of humanity, and if and when he goes I say, 'Good luckto him and God bless him!'"

At these generous words there was much applause, during which Martin satblushing like a big boy when he is introduced to the girl friends of hissister. 

As for me I did not think any speech could have been so beautiful, and Ifelt as if I could have cried for joy. 

When I got back to the hotel I _did_ cry, but it was for another reason. I was thinking of my father and wondering why he did not wait. 

"Why, why, why?" I asked myself. 

FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER

Next day, Martin came rushing down to my sitting-room with a sheaf ofletters in his hand, saying:

"That was jolly good of the boss, but look what he has let me in for?"

They were requests from various newspapers for portraits and interviews, and particularly from one great London journal for a special article tocontain an account of the nature and object of the proposed experiment. 

"What am I to do?" he said. "I'm all right for stringing gabble, but Icouldn't _write_ anything to save my soul. Now, you could. I'm sure youcould. You could write like Robinson Crusoe. Why shouldn't you write thearticle and I'll tell you what to put into it?"

There was no resisting that. And down at the bottom of my secret heart Iwas glad of the excuse to my conscience that I could not any longer runaway from Martin because I was necessary to help him. 

So we sat together all day long, and though it was like shooting therapids to follow Martin's impetuous and imaginative speech, I did mybest to translate his disconnected outbursts into more connected words, and when the article was written and read aloud to him he was delighted. 

"Stunning! Didn't I say you could write like Robinson Crusoe?"

In due course it was published and made a deep impression, for whereverI went people were talking of it, and though some said "Fudge!" andothers, like my husband, said "Dreams!" the practical result was thatthe great newspaper started a public subscription with the object ofproviding funds for the realisation of Martin's scheme. 

This brought him an immense correspondence, so that every morning hecame down with an armful of letters and piteous appeals to me to helphim to reply to them. 

I knew it would be dangerous to put myself in the way of so muchtemptation, but the end of it was that day after day we sat together inmy sitting-room, answering the inquiries of the sceptical, thecongratulations of the convinced, and the offers of assistance that camefrom people who wished to join in the expedition. 

What a joy it was! It was like the dawn of a new life to me. But thehighest happiness of all was to protect Martin against himself, to savehim from his over-generous impulses--in a word, to mother him. 

Many of the letters he received were mere mendicancy. He was not rich, yet he could not resist a pitiful appeal, especially if it came from awoman, and it was as much as I could do to restrain him from ruininghimself. 

Sometimes I would see him smuggle a letter into his side pocket, with--

"H'm! That will do later. "

"What is it?" I would ask. 

"Oh, nothing, nothing!" he would answer. 

"Hand it out, sir, " I would say, and then I would find a fierce delightin sending six freezing words of refusal to some impudent woman who wastrying to play upon the tender side of my big-hearted boy. 

Oh, it was delightful! My whole being seemed to be renewed. If only thedear sweet hours could go on and on for ever!

Sometimes my husband and Alma would look in upon us at our work, andthen, while the colour mounted to my eyes, Martin would say:

"I'm fishing with another man's floats, you see. "

"I see, " my husband would reply, fixing his monocle and showing hisfront teeth in a painful grin. 

"Just what dear Mary loves, though, " Alma would say. "I do believe shewould rather he sitting in this sunless room, writing letters for Mr. Conrad, than wearing her coronet at a King's coronation. "

"Just so, ma'am; there _are_ women like that, " Martin would answer, looking hard at her; and when she had gone, (laughing lightly but withthe frightened look I had seen before) he would say, as if speaking tohimself:

"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to put myfoot on it. "

At length the climax came. One day Martin rushed downstairs almostbeside himself in his boyish joy, to say that all the money he neededhad been subscribed, and that in honour of the maturing of the schemethe proprietor of the newspaper was to give a public luncheon at one ofthe hotels, and though no women were to be present at the "feed" a fewladies were to occupy seats in a gallery, and I was to be one of them. 

I had played with my temptation too long by this time to shrink from thedangerous exaltation which I knew the occasion would cause, so when theday came I went to the hotel in a fever of pleasure and pride. 

The luncheon was nearly over, the speeches were about to begin, and theladies' gallery was buzzing like a hive of bees, when I took my seat init. Two bright young American women sitting next to me were almost asexcited as myself, and looking down at the men through a pair ofopera-glasses they were asking each other which was Martin, whereupon myvanity, not to speak of my sense of possession, was so lifted up that Ipointed him out to them, and then borrowed their glasses to look at thechairman. 

He seemed to me to have that light of imagination in his eyes which wasalways blazing in Martin's, and when he began to speak I thought Icaught the note of the same wild passion. 

He said they were that day opening a new chapter in the wonderful bookof man's story, and though the dangers of the great deep might never beentirely overcome, and the wind would continue to blow as it listed, yetthe perils of the one and the movements of the other were going to beknown to, and therefore checked by, the human family. 

After that, and a beautiful tribute to Martin as a man, (that everybodywho had met him had come to love him, and that there must be somethingin the great solitudes of the silent white world to make men simple andstrong and great, as the sea made them staunch and true) he drank to thesuccess of the expedition, and called on Martin to respond to the toast. 

There was a great deal of cheering when Martin rose, but I was sonervous that I hardly heard it. He was nervous too, as I could plainlysee, for after a few words of thanks, he began to fumble the sheets of aspeech which he and I had prepared together, trying to read it, butlosing his place and even dropping his papers. 

Beads of perspiration were starting from my forehead and I knew I wasmaking noises in my throat, when all at once Martin threw his papers onthe table and said, in quite another voice:

"Ship-mates, I mean gentlemen, I never could write a speech in my life, and you see I can't read one, but I know what I want to say and ifyou'll take it as it comes here goes. "

Then in the simple style of a sailor, not always even grammatical yetsplendidly clear and bold and natural, blundering along as he used to dowhen he was a boy at school and could not learn his lessons, but withhis blue eyes ablaze, he told of his aims and his expectations. 

And when he came to the end he said:

"His lordship, the chairman, has said something about the good effectsof the solitudes of Nature on a man's character. I can testify to that. And I tell you this--whatever you are when you're up here and haveeverything you want, it's wonderful strange the way you're asking theLord to stretch out His hand and help you when you're down there, allalone and with an empty hungry stomach. 

"I don't know where you were last Christmas Day, shipmates . . . I meangentlemen, but I know where I was. I was in the 85th latitude, longitude163, four miles south and thirty west of Mount Darwin. It was my own bitof an expedition that my commander has made too much of, and I believein my heart my mates had had enough of it. When we got out of oursleeping bags that morning there was nothing in sight but miles andmiles of rolling waves of snow, seven thousand feet up on a windyplateau, with glaciers full of crevasses shutting us off from the sea, and not a living thing in sight as far as the eye could reach. 

"We were six in company and none of us were too good for Paradise, andone--he was an old Wapping sailor, we called him Treacle--had the nameof being a shocking old rip ashore. But we remembered what day it was, and we wanted to feel that we weren't cut off entirely from the world ofChristian men--our brothers and sisters who would be going to church athome. So I dug out my little prayer-book that my mother put in my kitgoing away, and we all stood round bare-headed in the snow--a shaggy oldlot I can tell you, with chins that hadn't seen a razor for a month--andI read the prayers for the day, the first and second Vespers, andLaudate Dominum and then the De Profundis. 

"I think we felt better doing that, but they say the comical and thetragical are always chasing each other, which can get in first, and itwas so with us, for just as I had got to an end with the solemn words, 'Out of the depths we cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord hear our cry, ' injumps old Treacle in his thickest cockney, 'And Gawd bless our pore olewives and sweethearts fur a-wye. '"

If Martin said any more nobody heard it. The men below were blowingtheir noses, and the women in the gallery were crying openly. 

"Well, the man who can talk like that may open all my letters andtelegrams, " said one of the young American women, who was wiping hereyes without shame. 

What I was doing, and what I was looking like, I did not know until thelady, who had lent me the opera-glasses leaned over to me and said:

"Excuse me, but are you his wife, may I ask?"

"Oh no, no, " I said nervously and eagerly, but only God knows how theword went through and through me. 

I had taken the wrong course, and I knew it. My pride, my joy, myhappiness were all accusing me, and when I went to bed that night I feltas if I had been a guilty woman. 

FIFTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

I tried to take refuge in religion. Every day and all day I humblybesought the pardon of heaven for the sin of loving Martin Conrad. 

The little religious duties which I had neglected since my marriage(such as crossing myself at rising from the table) I began to observeafresh, and being reminded by Martin's story that I had promised mymother to say a De Profundis for her occasionally I now said one everyday. I thought these exercises would bring me a certain relief, but theydid not. 

I searched my Missal for words that applied to my sinful state, andevery night on going to bed I prayed to God to take from me all unholythoughts, all earthly affections. But what was the use of my prayerswhen in the first dream of the first sleep I was rushing into Martin'sarms?

It was true that my love for Martin was what the world would call a purelove; it had no alloy of any kind; but all the same I thought I wasliving in a condition of adultery--adultery of the heart. 

Early every morning I went to mass, but the sense I used to have ofreturning from the divine sacrifice to the ordinary occupations of lifewith a new spirit and a clean heart I could feel no longer. 

I went oftener to confession than I had done before--twice a week tobegin with, then every other day, then every day. But the old joy, thesense of purity and cleansing, did not come. I thought at first thefault might be with my Confessor, for though I knew I was in thepresence of God, the whispering voice behind the grating, which used tothrill me with a feeling of the supernatural, was that of a young man, and I asked myself what a young priest could know by experience of thedeep temptations of human love. 

This was at the new Cathedral at Westminster, so I changed to a littleCatholic church in a kind of mews in Mayfair, and there my Confessor wasan older man whose quivering voice seemed to search the very depths ofmy being. He was deeply alarmed at my condition and counselled me topray to God night and day to strengthen me against temptation. 

"The Evil One is besieging your soul, my child, " he said. "Fight withhim, my daughter. "

I tried to follow my ghostly father's direction, but how hard it was todo so! Martin had only to take my hand and look into my eyes and all mygood resolutions were gone in a moment. 

As a result of the fierce struggle between my heart and my soul myhealth began to fail me. From necessity now, and not from design, I hadto keep my room, but even there my love for Martin was always hanginglike a threatening sword over my head. 

My maid Price was for ever singing his praises. He was so bright, socheerful, so strong, so manly; in fact, he was perfect, and any woman inthe world might be forgiven if she fell in love with him. 

Her words were like music in my ears, and sometimes I felt as if Iwanted to throw my arms about her neck and kiss her. But at othermoments I reproved her, telling her it was very wicked of her to thinkso much of the creature instead of fixing her mind on the Creator--apiece of counsel which made Price, who was all woman, open her sparklingblack eyes in bewilderment. 

Nearly every morning she brought me a bunch of flowers, which Martin hadbought at Covent Garden, all glittering from the sunshine and damp withthe dew. I loved to have them near me, but, finding they tempted me tothink more tenderly of him who sent them, I always contrived by oneexcuse or another to send them into the sitting-room that they might beout of my sight at all events. 

After a while Price, remembering my former artifice, began to believethat I was only pretending to be ill, in order to draw Martin on, andthen taking a certain liberty with me, as with a child, she reproved me. 

"If I were a lady I couldn't have the heart, " she said, "I reallycouldn't. It's all very well for us women, but men don't understand suchways. They're only children, men are, when you come to know them. "

I began to look upon poor Price as a honeyed fiend sent by Satan toseduce me, and to say the truth she sometimes acted up to the character. One day she said:

"If I was tied to a man I didn't love, and who didn't love me, andsomebody else, worth ten of him was ready and waiting, I would take thesweet with the bitter, I would. We women must follow our hearts, and whyshouldn't we?"

Then I scolded her dreadfully, asking if she had forgotten that she wasspeaking to her mistress, and a married woman; but all the while I knewthat it was myself, not my maid, I was angry with, for she had only beengiving voice to the thoughts that were secretly tormenting me. 

I had been in bed about a week when Price came with a letter in her handand a look of triumph in her black eyes and said:

"There, my lady! What did I tell you? You've had it all your own way andnow you've driven him off. He has left the hotel and gone to live on hisship. "

This frightened me terribly, and partly for that reason I ordered herout of the room, telling her she must leave me altogether if she evertook such liberties again. But I'm sure she saw me, as she was goingthrough the door, take up Martin's letter, which I had thrown on to thetable, and press it to my lips. 

The letter was of no consequence, it was merely to tell me that he wasgoing down to Tilbury for a few days, to take possession of his old shipin the name of his company, but it said in a postscript:

"If there's anything I can do for you, pass me the word and I'll come uplike quick-sticks. "

"What can I do? What can I do?" I thought. Everything my heart desiredmy soul condemned as sinful, and religion had done nothing to liberateme from the pains of my guilty passion. 

All this time my husband and Alma were busy with the gaieties of theLondon season, which was then in full swing, with the houses in Mayfairbeing ablaze every night, the blinds up and the windows open to cool theoverheated rooms in which men and women could be seen dancing inclosely-packed crowds. 

One night, after Alma and my husband had gone to a reception inGrosvenor Square, I had a sudden attack of heart-strain and had to beput to bed, whereupon Price, who had realised that I was really ill, told Hobson, my husband's valet, to go after his master and bring himback immediately. 

"It'll be all as one, but I'll go if you like, " said Hobson. 

In half an hour he came back with my husband's answer. "Send for adoctor. "

This put Price into a fever of mingled anger and perplexity, and notknowing what else to do she telegraphed to Martin on his ship, tellinghim that I was ill and asking what doctor she ought to call in to seeme. 

Inside an hour a reply came not from Tilbury but from Portsmouth saying:

"Call Doctor ---- of Brook Street. Am coming up at once. "

All this I heard for the first time when Price, with another triumphantlook, came into my bedroom flourishing Martin's telegram as somethingshe had reason to be proud of. 

"You don't mean to say that you telegraphed to Mr. Conrad?" I said. 

"Why _not?_" said Price. "When a lady is ill and her husband pays noattention to her, and there's somebody else not far off who would givehis two eyes to save her a pain in her little finger, what is a woman todo?"

I told her what she was _not_ to do. She was not to call the doctorunder any circumstances, and when Martin came she was to make it plainto him that she had acted on her own responsibility. 

Towards midnight he arrived, and Price brought him into my room in along ulster covered with dust. I blushed and trembled at sight of him, for his face betrayed the strain and anxiety he had gone through on myaccount, and when he smiled at seeing that I was not as ill as he hadthought, I was ashamed to the bottom of my heart. 

"You'll be sorry you've made such a long journey now that you seethere's so little amiss with me, " I said. 

"Sorry?" he said. "By the holy saints, I would take a longer one everynight of my life to see you looking so well at the end of it. "

His blue eyes were shining like the sun from behind a cloud, and thecruellest looks could not have hurt me more. 

I tried to keep my face from expressing the emotion I desired toconceal, and asked if he had caught a train easily from Portsmouth, seeing he had arrived so early. 

"No. Oh no, there was no train up until eleven o'clock, " he said. 

"Then how did you get here so soon?" I asked, and though he would nottell me at first I got it out of him at last--he had hired a motor-carand travelled the ninety miles to London in two hours and a half. 

That crushed me. I could not speak. I thought I should have choked. Lying there with Martin at arm's length of me, I was afraid of myself, and did not know what I might do next. But at last, with a great effortto control myself, I took his hand and kissed it, and then turned myface to the wall. 

FIFTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

That was the beginning of the end, and when, next day towards noon, myhusband came with drowsy eyes to make a kind of ungracious apology, saying he supposed the doctor had been sent for, I said:

"James, I want you to take me home. "

"Home? You mean . . . Castle Raa?"

"Y-es. "

He hesitated, and I began to plead with him, earnestly and eagerly, notto deny me what I asked. 

"Take me home, I beg, I pray. "

At length, seeming to think I must be homesick, he said:

"Well, you know my views about that God-forsaken place, but the season'snearly at an end, and I don't mind going back on one condition--that youraise no objection to my inviting a few friends to liven it up a bit?"

"It is your house, " I said. "You must do as you please in it. "

"Very good; that's settled, " he said, getting up to go. "And I dare sayit will do you no harm to be out of the way of all this church-going andconfessing to priests, who are always depressing people even whenthey're not making mischief. "

Hardly had my husband left me when Alma came into my sitting-room in themost affectionate and insincere of her moods. 

"My poor, dear sweet child, " she said. "If I'd had the least idea youwere feeling so badly I shouldn't have allowed Jimmy to stay anotherminute at that tiresome reception. But how good it was of Mr. Conrad tocome all that way to see you! That's what I call being a friend now!"

Then came the real object of her visit--I saw it coming. 

"I hear you're to have a house-party at Castle Raa. Jimmy's in his roomwriting piles of invitations. He has asked me and I should love to go, but of course I cannot do so without _you_ wish it. Do you?"

What could I say? What I _did_ say I scarcely know. I only know that atthe next minute Alma's arms were round my neck, and she was saying:

"You dear, sweet, unselfish little soul! Come let me kiss you. "

It was done. I had committed myself. After all what right had I to raisemyself on a moral pinnacle now? And what did it matter, anyway? I wasflying from the danger of my own infidelities, not to save my husbandfrom his. 

Price had been in the room during this interview and when it was over Iwas ashamed to look at her. 

"I can't understand you, my lady; I really can't, " she said. 

Next day I wrote a little letter to Martin on the _Scotia_ telling himof our change of plans, but forbidding him to trouble to come up to saygood-bye, yet half hoping he would disregard my injunction. 

He did. Before I left my bedroom next morning I heard his voice in thesitting-room talking to Price, who with considerable emphasis was givingher views of Alma. 

When I joined him I thought his face (which had grown to be verypowerful) looked hard and strained; but his voice was as soft as everwhile he said I was doing right in going home and that my native airmust be good for me. 

"But what's this Price tells me--that Madame is going with you?"

I tried to make light of that, but I broke down badly, for his eyes wereon me, and I could see that he thought I was concealing the truth. 

For some minutes he looked perplexed, as if trying to understand how itcame to pass that sickening, as he believed I was, at the sight of myhusband's infidelities I was yet carrying the provocative cause of themaway with me, and then he said again:

"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to put myfoot on it. I will, too, one of these days--bet your life I will. "

It hurt me to hide anything from him, but how could I tell him that itwas not from Alma I was flying but from himself?

When the day came for our departure I hoped I might get away withoutseeing Martin again. We did get out of the hotel and into the railwaystation, yet no sooner was I seated in the carriage than (in the cruelwar that was going on within me) I felt dreadfully down that he was notthere to see me off. 

But at the very last moment, just as Alma with her spaniel under herarm, and my husband with his terrier on a strap, were about to step intothe train, up came Martin like a gust of mountain wind. 

"Helloa!" he cried. "I shall be seeing you soon. Everything's settledabout the expedition. We're to sail the first week in September, so asto get the summer months in the Antarctic. But before that I must goover to the island to say good-bye to the old folks, and I'll see you atyour father's I suppose. "

Then Alma gave my husband a significant glance and said:

"But, Mary, my love, wouldn't it be better for Mr. Conrad to come toCastle Raa? You won't be able to go about very much. Remember yourdelicate condition, you know. "

"Of course, why of course, " said my husband. "That's quite true, and ifMr. Conrad will do me the honour to accept my hospitality for a fewdays. . . . "

It was what I wanted above everything on earth, and yet I said:

"No, no! It wouldn't be fair. Martin will be too busy at the lastmoment. "

But Martin himself jumped in eagerly with:

"Certainly! Delighted! Greatest pleasure in the world. "

And then, while Alma gave my husband a look of arch triumph to which hereplied with a painful smile, Martin leaned over to me and whispered"

"Hush! I want to! I must!" though what he meant by that I never knew. 

He continued to look at me with a tender expression until we saidgood-bye; but after the carriage door had been closed and the engine hadthrobbed, and the guard had whistled, I thought I had never seen hisstrong face so stern as when the train moved from the platform. 

FIFTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

We reached Ellan towards the close of the following day. It was theheight of the holiday season, and the island seemed to be ablaze withlights. 

Two motor-cars were waiting for us at the pier, and in a little while wewere driving out of Blackwater through congested masses of people whowere rambling aimlessly through the principal streets. 

Our way was across a stone bridge that crossed the harbour at its innerend, and then up a hill that led to a headland overlooking the sea. Within half an hour we drew up at a pair of large gate posts which weremuch decayed and leaning heavily out of the perpendicular. 

The chauffeur of the first of our ears got down to open the gate, andafter it had clashed to behind us, we began to ascend a very steep drivethat was bordered by tall elm trees. It was now almost dark, and therooks, which had not yet gone off to the mountains, were making theirevening clamour. 

"Well, my dear, you're at home at last, and much good may it do you, "said my husband. 

I made no answer to this ungracious speech, but Alma was all excitement. 

"So this is Castle Raa! What a fascinating old place!" she said, and aswe drove through the park she reached out of the car to catch a firstglimpse of the broad terraces and winding ways to the sea which had beenreflected in her memory since she was a child. 

I felt no such anxiety. Never did a young bride approach the home of herhusband with less curiosity, but as our motor-car toiled up the drive Icould not help seeing the neglected condition of the land, with boughsof trees lying where they had fallen in the storms, as well as brokengates half off their hinges and swinging to the wind. 

The house itself, when we came in sight of it, was a large castellatedbuilding with many lesser turrets and one lofty octagonal tower, coveredentirely with ivy, which, being apparently unshorn for years, hung inlong trailers down the walls, and gave the whole pile the appearance ofa huge moss-covered rock of the sea planted on a promontory of the land. 

As our car went thundering up to the great hall door nearly the whole ofthe servants and some of the tenant farmers (under the direction of thetall, sallow man who had been my husband's guardian in former days, andwas now his steward) were waiting to welcome us, as well as LadyMargaret Anselm, who was still reserved and haughty in her manner, though pleasant enough with me. 

My husband nodded to all, shook hands with some, presented Alma to hisaunt as "one of Mary's old school friends, " (a designation which, as Icould see, had gone ahead of her) and then we passed into the house. 

I found the inside corresponded with the outside in its appearance ofneglect and decay, the big square hall having rusty and disjointedarmour on its wainscotted walls and the mark of water on the floor, which had come from a glass dome over the well of the stairs, for it hadrained while we were on the sea. 

The drawing-room had faded curtains over the windows, faded velvet onthe square sofa and stiff chairs, faded carpets, faded samplers, andfaded embroidery on faded screens. 

The dining-room (the sedate original of my father's rather garish copy)was a panelled chamber, hung round with rubicund portraits of the maleO'Neills from the early ones of the family who had been Lords of Ellandown to the "bad Lord Raa, " who had sworn at my grandmother on the highroad. 

I felt as if no woman could have made her home here for at least ahundred years, and I thought the general atmosphere of the house wasthat of the days when spendthrift noblemen, making the island a refugefrom debt, spent their days in gambling and their nights in drinkingbumpers from bowls of whiskey punch to the nameless beauties they hadleft "in town. "

They were all gone, all dead as the wood of the worm-eaten wainscotting, but the sound of their noisy merry-making seemed to cling to the raftersstill, and as I went up to my rooms the broad oaken staircase seemed tobe creaking under their drunken footsteps. 

My own apartments, to which Lady Margaret conducted me, were on thesouthern side of the house--a rather stuffy bedroom with walls coveredby a kind of pleated chintz, and a boudoir with a stone balcony that hada flight of steps going down to a terrace of the garden, whichoverlooked a glen and had a far view of the sea. 

On the opposite side of the landing outside (which was not immediatelyoff the great staircase though open to the view of it) there was asimilar suite of rooms which I thought might be my husband's, but I wastold they were kept for a guest. 

Being left alone I had taken off my outer things and was standing on mybalcony, listening to the dull hum of the water in the glen, the rustleof the trees above it, the surge of the sea on the rocks below, thecreaking of a rusty weathercock and the striking of a court-yard clock, when I also heard the toot and throb of another motor-car, and as soonas it came up I saw that it contained Aunt Bridget in the half-moonbonnet and Betsy Beauty, who was looking more than ever like a countrybelle. 

When I went down to the drawing-room Lady Margaret was pouring out teafor them, and at sight of me Aunt Bridget cried, "Sakes alive, here she is herself!"

"But how pale and pinched and thin!" said Betsy Beauty. 

"Nonsense, girl, that's only natural, " said my Aunt Bridget, withsomething like a wink; and then she went on to say that she had justbeen telling her ladyship that if I felt lonely and a little helpless onfirst coming home Betsy would be pleased to visit me. 

Before I could reply my husband came in, followed shortly by Alma, whowas presented as before, as "Mary's old school-fellow"; and then, whileBetsy talked to Alma and my husband to his kinswoman, Aunt Bridget, inan undertone, addressed herself to me. 

"You're that way, aren't you? . . . No? Goodness me, girl, your father_will_ be disappointed!"

Just then a third motor-car came throbbing up to the house, and Betsywho was standing by the window cried:

"It's Uncle Daniel with Mr. Curphy and Nessy. "

"Nessy, of course, " said Aunt Bridget grumpily, and then she told me ina confidential whisper that she was a much-injured woman in regard to"that ungrateful step-daughter, " who was making her understand the wordsof Scripture about the pang that was sharper than a serpent's tooth. 

As the new-comers entered I saw that Nessy had developed an old maid'sidea of smartness, and that my father's lawyer was more than ever likean over-fatted fish; but my father himself (except that his hair waswhiter) was the same man still, with the same heavy step, the same loudvoice and the same tempestuous gaiety. 

"All here? Good! Glad to be home, I guess! Strong and well and hearty, Isuppose? . . . Yes, sir, yes! I'm middling myself, sir. Middling, sir, middling!"

During these rugged salutations I saw that Alma, with the bad manners ofa certain type of society woman, looked on with a slightly impertinentair of amused superiority, until she encountered my father's masterfuleyes, which nobody in the world could withstand. 

After a moment my father addressed himself to me. 

"Well, gel, " he said, taking me by the shoulders, as he did in Rome, "you must have cut a dash in Egypt, I guess. Made the money fly, didn'tyou? No matter! My gold was as good as anybody else's, and I didn'tgrudge it. You'll clear me of that, anyway. "

Then there was some general talk about our travels, about affairs on theisland (Mr. Curphy saying, with a laugh and a glance in my direction, that things were going so well with my father that if all his schemesmatured he would have no need to wait for a descendant to become the"uncrowned King of Ellan"), and finally about Martin Conrad, whose greatexploits had become known even in his native country. 

"Extraordinary! Extraordinary!" said my father. "I wouldn't havebelieved it of him. I wouldn't really. Just a neighbour lad without apenny at him. And now the world's trusting him with fifty thousandpounds, they're telling me!"

"Well, many are called but few are chosen, " said Mr. Curphy with anotherlaugh. 

After that, and some broken conversation, Aunt Bridget expressed adesire to see the house, as the evening was closing in and they mustsoon be going back. 

Lady Margaret thereupon took her, followed by the rest of us, over theprincipal rooms of the Castle; and it was interesting to see the awewith which she looked upon everything--her voice dropping to a whisperin the dining-room. I remember, as if the scene of carousing of the oldroysterers had been a sort of sanctuary. 

My father, less impressed, saw nothing but a house in bad repair, andturning to my husband, who had been obviously ill at ease, he said:

"Go on like this much longer, son-in-law, and you'll be chargingtwo-pence a head to look at your ruins. Guess I must send my architectover to see what he can do for you. "

Then taking me aside he made his loud voice as low as he could and said:

"What's this your Aunt Bridget tells me? Nine months married and nosign yet? Tut, tut! That won't do, gel, that won't do. "

I tried to tell him not to spend money on the Castle if he intended todo so in expectation of an heir, but my heart was in my mouth and what Ireally said I do not know. I only know that my father looked at me for amoment as if perplexed, and then burst into laughter. 

"I see! I see!" he said. "It's a doctor you want. I must send Conrad toput a sight on you. It'll be all right, gel, it'll be all right! Yourmother was like that when you were coming. "

As we returned to the hall Betsy Beauty whispered that she was surprisedMr. Eastcliff had married, but she heard from Madame that we were tohave a house-party soon, and she hoped I would not forget her. 

Then Aunt Bridget, who had been eyeing Alma darkly, asked me who andwhat she was and where she came from, whereupon I (trying to put thebest face on things) explained that she was the daughter of a rich NewYork banker. After that Aunt Bridget's countenance cleared perceptiblyand she said:

"Ah, yes, of course! I thought she had a quality toss with her. "

The two motor-cars had been drawn up to the door, and the two partieshad taken their seats in them when my father, looking about him, said tomy husband:

"Your garden is as rough as a thornbush, son-in-law. I must send Tommythe Mate to smarten it up a bit. So long! So long!"

At the next moment they were gone, and I was looking longingly afterthem. God knows my father's house had never been more than astepmother's home to me, but at that moment I yearned to return to itand felt like a child who was being left behind at school. 

What had I gained, by running away from London? Nothing at all. AlreadyI knew I had brought my hopeless passion with me. 

And now I was alone. 

FIFTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

Next day Lady Margaret came to my room to say good-bye, telling me shehad only stayed at Castle Raa to keep house and make ready for me, andmust now return to her own home, which was in London. 

I was sorry, for my heart had warmed to her, and when I stood at thedoor and saw her drive off with my husband to catch the afternoonsteamer, I felt I had lost both sympathy and protection. 

Alma's feelings were less troubled, and as we turned back into the houseI could see that she was saying to herself:

"Thank goodness, _she's_ gone away. "

A day or two later Doctor Conrad came, according to my father'sinstructions, and I was glad to see his close-cropped iron-grey headcoming up the stairs towards my room. 

Naturally our first conversation was about Martin, who had written totell his parents of our meeting in London and to announce his intendedvisit. It was all very exciting, and now his mother was working morningand night at the old cottage, to prepare for the arrival of her son. Such scrubbing and scouring! Such taking up of carpets and laying themdown again, as if the darling old thing were expecting a prince!

"It ought to be Sunny Lodge indeed before she's done with it, " said theDoctor. 

"I'm sure it will, " I said. "It always was, and it always will be. "

"And how are we ourselves, " said the doctor. "A little below par, eh?Any sickness? No? Nausea? No? Headache and a feeling of lassitude, then?No?"

After other questions and tests, the old doctor was looking puzzled, when, not finding it in my heart to keep him in the dark any longer, Itold him there was nothing amiss with my health, but I was unhappy andhad been so since the time of my marriage. 

"I see, " he said. "It's your mind and not your body that is sick?"

"Yes. "

"I'll speak to Father Dan, " he said. "Good-bye! God bless you!"

Less than half an hour after he had gone, Alma came to me in her softestmode, saying the doctor had said I was suffering from extreme nervousexhaustion and ought to be kept from worries and anxieties of everykind. 

"So if there's anything I can do while I'm here, dearest, . . . Such aslooking after the house and the servants. . . . No, no, don't deny me;it will be a pleasure, I assure you. . . . So we'll say that's settled, shall we? . . . You dear, sweet darling creature!"

I was too much out of heart to care what happened, but inside two days Irealised that Alma had taken possession of the house, and was orderingand controlling everything. 

Apparently this pleased such of the servants as had anything to gain byit--the housekeeper in particular--for Alma was no skinflint and she wasmaking my husband's money flow like water, but it was less agreeable tomy maid, who said:

"This is a nice place to be sure, where the mistress takes no interestin anything, and the guest walks over everybody. She'll walk over themistress herself before long--mark my word but she will. "

It would be about a week after our arrival at Castle Raa that Price cameto my room to say that a priest was asking for me, and he was such astrange-looking thing that she was puzzled to know if his face was thatof a child, a woman or a dear old man. 

I knew in a moment it must be Father Dan, so I went flying downstairsand found him in the hall, wearing the same sack coat (or so it seemed)as when I was a child and made cupboards of its vertical pockets, carrying the same funny little bag which he had taken to Rome and usedfor his surplice at funerals, and mopping his forehead and flicking hisboots with a red print handkerchief, for the day was hot and the roadswere dusty. 

He was as glad to see me as I to see him, and when I asked if he wouldhave tea, he said Yes, for he had walked all the way from thePresbytery, after fasting the day before; and when I asked if he wouldnot stay overnight he said Yes to that, too, "if it would not betroublesome and inconvenient. "

So I took his bag and gave it to a maid, telling her to take it to theguest's room on my landing, and to bring tea to my boudoir immediately. 

But hardly had I taken him upstairs and we had got seated in my privateroom, when the maid knocked at the door to say that the housekeeperwished to speak with me, and on going out, and closing the door behindme, I found her on the landing, a prim little flinty person with quickeyes, thin lips and an upward lift of her head. 

"Sorry, my lady, but it won't be convenient for his reverence to stay inthe house to-night, " she said. 

"Why so?" I said. 

"Because Madame has ordered all the rooms to be got ready for thehouse-party, and this one, " (pointing to the guest's room opposite) "isprepared for Mr. And Mrs. Eastcliff, and we don't know how soon they mayarrive. "

I felt myself flushing up to the eyes at the woman's impudence, and itadded to my anger that Alma herself was standing at the head of thestairs, looking on and listening. So with a little spurt of injuredpride I turned severely on the one while really speaking to the other, and said:

"Be good enough to make this room ready for his reverence without onemoment's delay, and please remember for the future, that I am mistressin this house, and your duty is to obey me and nobody else whatever. "

As I said this and turned back to my boudoir, I saw that Alma's deepeyes had a sullen look, and I felt that she meant to square accountswith me some day; but what she did was done at once, for goingdownstairs (as I afterwards heard from Price) she met my husband in thehall, where, woman-like, she opened her battery upon him at his weakestspot, saying:

"Oh, I didn't know your wife was priest-ridden. "

"Priest-ridden?"

"Precisely, " and then followed an explanation of what had happened, withastonishing embellishments which made my husband pale with fury. 

Meantime I was alone with Father Dan in my room, and while I poured outhis tea and served him with bread and butter, he talked first aboutMartin (as everybody seemed to do when speaking to me), saying:

"He was always my golden-headed boy, and it's a mighty proud man I amentirely to hear the good news of him. "

More of the same kind there was, all music to my ears, and then FatherDan came to closer quarters, saying Doctor Conrad had dropped a hintthat I was not very happy. 

"Tell your old priest everything, my child, and if there is anything hecan do. . . . "

Without waiting for more words I sank to my knees at his feet, andpoured out all my troubles--telling him my marriage had been a failure;that the sanctifying grace which he had foretold as the result of thesacrament of holy wedlock had not come to pass; that not only did I notlove my husband, but my husband loved another woman, who was living herewith us in this very house. 

Father Dan was dreadfully distressed. More than once while I wasspeaking he crossed himself and said, "Lord and His Holy Mother loveus;" and when I came to an end he began to reproach himself foreverything, saying that he ought to have known that our lad (meaningMartin) did not write those terrible letters without being certain theywere true, and that from the first day my husband came to our parish thesun had been darkened by his shadow. 

"But take care, " he said. "I've told nobody about the compact we madewith your husband--nobody but our Blessed Lady herself--and you mustn'tthink of that as a way out of your marriage. No, nor of any other way, no matter what, which the world, and the children of the world, may talkabout. "

"But I can't bear it, I can't bear it, " I cried. 

"Hush! Hush! Don't say that, my daughter. Think of it as one of themisfortunes of life which we all have to suffer. How many poor womenhave to bear the sickness and poverty, not to speak of the drunkennessand death, of their husbands! Do they think they have a right to runaway from all that--to break the sacred vows of their marriage onaccount of it? No, my child, no, and neither must you. Some day it willall come right. You'll see it will. And meantime by the memory of yourmother--that blessed saint whom the Lord has made one of his own. . . . "

"Then what can I do?"

"Pray, my child, pray for strength to bear your trials and to resist alltemptation. Say a rosary for the Blessed Virgin every morning beforebreaking your fast. I'll say a rosary, too. You'll see yet this is onlyGod's love for you, and you'll welcome His holy will. "

While my dear father and friend was counselling me so I heard my husbandspeaking in his loud, grating tones on the landing outside, and before Icould rise from my knees he had burst open the door and entered theroom. 

His face was deadly white and he was like a man out of his right mind. 

"Mary, " he said, looking down at me where I knelt with my hands crossedon my bosom, "when did I give you permission to introduce a priest intomy house? Isn't it enough for a man to have a wife who is a Catholicwithout having the church and its ministers shunted into his homewithout his permission?"

I was so taken aback by this furious assault that at first I could notspeak, but Father Dan interposed to defend me, saying with beautifulpatience, that his visit had been quite unexpected on my part, and thatI had asked him to stay overnight only because he was an old man, andhad had a long walk from his parish. 

"I'm much obliged to your reverence, " said my husband, who was quiveringwith fury, "but my wife is perfectly capable of answering for herselfwithout your assistance, and as for your parish you would have donebetter to stay there instead of coming to meddle in this one. "

"Aren't you measuring me by your own yard, sir?" said Father Dan, and atthat straight thrust my husband broke into ungovernable rage. 

"Everybody knows what a Popish priest is, " he said. "A meddlesomebusybody who pokes his nose into other men's secrets. But priest or nopriest, I'll have no man coming to my house to make mischief betweenhusband and wife. "

"Are you sure, " said Father Dan, "that some woman isn't in your housealready, making mischief between wife and husband?"

That thrust too went home. My husband looked at me with flashing eyesand then said:

"As I thought! You've been sent for to help my wife to make a greatto-do of her imaginary grievances. You're to stay in the house too, andbefore long we'll have you setting up as master here and giving ordersto my servants! But not if I know it! . . . Your reverence, if you haveany respect for your penitent, you'll please be good enough to leave mywife to _my_ protection. "

I saw that Father Dan had to gulp down his gathering anger, but he onlysaid:

"Say no more, my lord. No true priest ever comes between a man and thewife whom God has given him. It's his business to unite people, not toput them apart. As for this dear child, I have loved her since she wasan infant in arms, and never so much as at the present speaking, so Idon't need to learn my duty from one who appears to care no more for herthan for the rind of a lemon. I'll go, sir, " said the old man, drawinghimself up like a wounded lion, "but it's not to your protection Ileave her--it's to that of God's blessed and holy love and will. "

My husband had gone before the last words were spoken, but I think theymust have followed him as he went lunging down the stairs. 

During this humiliating scene a hot flush of shame had come to my cheeksand I wanted to tell Father Dan not to let it grieve him, but I could donothing but stoop and kiss his hand. 

Meantime two or three of the servants had gathered on the landing at thesound of my husband's voice, and among them was the flinty housekeeperholding the Father's little bag, and she gave it back to him as hepassed her. 

Then, all being over, the woman came into my room, with an expression ofvictorious mischief in her eyes and said:

"Your ladyship had better have listened to them as knows, you see. "

I was too benumbed by that cruel stroke to reply, but Price said enoughfor both of us. 

"If them as knows, " she said, "don't get out of this room inside twoseconds they'll get their ugly faces slapped. "

 * * * * *

I thought I had reached the end of my power of endurance, and thatnight, before going to bed, while my maid was taking down my hair, and Iwas thinking of Martin and asking myself if I should put up with myhusband's brutalities any longer, I heard her say:

"If I were a lady married to the wrong man, I'd have the right one if Ihad to go through the divorce court for him. "

Now that was so exactly the thought that was running riot in my owntormented mind, that I flew at her like a wild cat, asking her how shedared to say anything so abominably wicked, and telling her to take hernotice there and then. 

But hardly had she left the room, when my heart was in my mouth again, and I was trembling with fear lest she should take me at my word andthen the last of my friends would be gone. 

FIFTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

Within the next few days the house-party arrived. There would be twentyof them at least, not counting valets and ladies' maids, so that largeas Castle Raa was the house was full. 

They were about equally divided as to sex and belonged chiefly to myhusband's class, but they included Mr. Eastcliff's beautiful wife, Camilla, and Alma's mother, who, much to Alma's chagrin, had insistedupon being invited. 

My husband required me to receive them, and I did so, though I was onlytheir nominal hostess, and they knew it and treated me accordingly. 

I should be ashamed to speak of the petty slights they put upon me, howthey consulted Alma in my presence and otherwise wounded my pride as awoman by showing me that I had lost my own place in my husband's house. 

I know there are people of the same class who are kind and considerate, guileless and pure, the true nobility of their country--women who aredevoted to their homes and children, and men who spend their wealth andstrength for the public good--but my husband's friends were not of thatkind. 

They were vain and proud, selfish, self-indulgent, thoroughly insincere, utterly ill-mannered, shockingly ill-informed, astonishinglyill-educated (capable of speaking several languages but incapable ofsaying a sensible word in any of them), living and flourishing in theworld without religion, without morality, and (if it is not a cantphrase to use) without God. 

What their conduct was when out shooting, picnicking, driving, riding, motoring, and yachting (for Mr. Eastcliff had arrived in his yacht, which was lying at anchor in the port below the glen), I do not know, for "doctor's orders" were Alma's excuse for not asking me to accompanythem. 

But at night they played bridge (their most innocent amusement), gambledand drank, banged the piano, danced "Grizzly Bears, " sang duets from thelatest musical comedies, and then ransacked the empty houses of theiridle heads for other means of killing the one enemy of theirexistence--Time. 

Sometimes they would give entertainments in honour of their dogs, whenall the animals of all the guests (there seemed to be a whole kennel ofthem) would be dressed up in coats of silk and satin with pockets andpocket-handkerchiefs, and then led downstairs to the drawing-room, whereAlma's wheezy spaniel and my husband's peevish terrier were supposed toreceive them. 

Sometimes they would give "freak dinners, " when the guests themselveswould be dressed up, the men in women's clothes, the women in men's, themale imitating the piping treble of the female voices, and the femalethe over-vowelled slang of the male, until, tiring of this foolishness, they would end up by flinging the food at the pictures on the walls, theusual pellet being softened bread and the favourite target the noses inthe family portraits, which, hit and covered with a sprawling mess, looked so ridiculous as to provoke screams of laughter. 

The talk at table was generally of horses and dogs, but sometimes it wasof love, courtship and marriage, including conjugal fidelity, which wasa favourite subject of ridicule, with both the women and the men. 

Thus my husband would begin by saying (he often said it in my hearing)that once upon a time men took their wives as they took their horses, ontrial for a year and a day, and "really with some women there wassomething to say for the old custom. "

Then Mr. Vivian would remark that it was "a jolly good idea, by Jove, "and if he "ever married, by the Lord that's just what he would do. "

Then Mr. Eastcliff would say that it was a ridiculous superstition thata woman should have her husband all to herself, "as if he were a kind oftoothbrush which she could not share with anybody else, " and somebodywould add that she might as reasonably want her dentist or herhairdresser to be kept for her own use only. 

After that the ladies, not to be left behind, would join in the off-handrattle, and one of them would give it as her opinion that a wife mighthave an incorrigibly unfaithful husband, and yet be well off. 

"Ugh!" said Alma one night, shrugging her shoulders. "Think of a poorwoman being tied for life to an entirely faithful husband!"

"I adore the kind of man who goes to the deuce for a woman--Parnell, andGambetta and Boulanger and that sort, " said a "smart" girl of three orfour-and-twenty, whereupon Camilla Eastcliff (she was a Russian) cried:

"That's vhy the co-respondents in your divorce courts are so sharming. They're like the villayns in the plays--always so dee-lightfullyvicked. "

Oh, the sickening horror of it all! Whether it was really moralcorruption or only affectation and pose, it seemed equally shocking, andthough I bore as much of it as I could with a cheerful face, I escapedas often as possible to the clean atmosphere of my own room. 

But even there I was not always allowed to be alone, for Alma's motherfrequently followed me. She was a plump little person in a profuseornamentation of diamond rings and brooches, with little or noeducation, and a reputation for saying risky things in blundering Frenchwhereof the principal humour lay in the uncertainty as to whether sheknew their meaning or not. 

Nevertheless she was the only good-hearted woman in the house, and Ireally believe she thought she was doing a kind act in keeping mecompany. But oh, how I suffered from her long accounts of her former"visits" to my house, whereby I learned, without wishing to, what herorigin had been (the daughter of a London postman); what position shehad held in Castle Raa in her winsome and reckless youth (one that neednot be defined); how she had met her husband in New York and he hadmarried her to save the reputation of his child; and finally how theAmerican ladies of society had refused to receive her, and she had vowedto be revenged on them by marrying Alma to the highest title in Europethat could be bought with money. 

"I was just like your father, my dear. I never did no manner of harm tothose people. They used to think I thought myself better blood nor theywere, but I never thought no such thing, I assure you. Only when theyturned nasty after my marriage I made up my mind--just as your fatherdid--as Alma should marry a bigger husband nor any of them, even if hewasn't worth a dime and 'adn't a 'air on 'is 'ead. "

But even these revelations about herself were less humiliating than hersympathy with me, which implied that I was not fitted to be mistress ofa noble house--how could it be expected of me?--whereas Alma was just asif she had been born to it, and therefore it was lucky for me that I hadher there to show me how to do things. 

"Alma's gotten such _ton!_ Such distangy manners!" she would say. 

The effect of all this was to make me feel, as I had never felt before, the intolerable nature of the yoke I was living under. When I lookedinto the future and saw nothing before me but years of this ignoblebondage, I told myself that nothing--no sacrament or contract, no law ofchurch or state--could make me endure it. 

From day to day my maid came to me with insidious hints about Alma andmy husband. I found myself listening to them. I also found myselfrefreshing my memory of the hideous scene in Paris, and wondering why Ihad condoned the offence by staying an hour longer under my husband'sprotection. 

And then there was always another force at work within me--my own secretpassion. Though sometimes I felt myself to be a wretched sinner andthought the burden I had to bear was heaven's punishment for my guiltylove, at other times my whole soul rose in revolt, and I cried out notmerely for separation from my husband but for absolute sundering. 

Twice during the painful period of the house-party I heard from Martin. His first letter was full of accounts of the far-reaching work of hisexpedition--the engaging of engineers, electricians, geologists andmasons, and the shipping of great stores of wireless apparatus--for hisspirits seemed to be high, and life was full of good things for him. 

His second letter told me that everything was finished, and he was tovisit the island the next week, going first to "the old folks" andcoming to me for a few days immediately before setting sail. 

That brought matters to a head, and compelled me to take action. 

It may have been weak of me, but not wanting a repetition of the scenewith Father Dan, (knowing well that Martin would not bear it with thesame patience) I sent the second letter to Alma, asking if thearrangement would be agreeable. She returned it with the endorsement(scribbled in pencil across the face), "Certainly; anything to please_you_, dear. "

I submitted even to that. Perhaps I was a poor-spirited thing, wantingin proper pride, but I had a feeling that it was not worth while towaste myself in little squibs of temper, because an eruption was coming(I was sure of that) in which Martin would be concerned on my side, andthen everybody and everything would be swept out of the path of my lifefor ever. 

Martin came. In due course I read in the insular newspapers of hisarrival on the island--how the people had turned out in crowds to cheerhim at the pier, and how, on reaching our own village the neighbours (Iknew the names of all of them) had met him at the railway station andtaken him to his mother's house, and then lighted fires on the mountainsfor his welcome home. 

It cut me to the heart's core to think of Martin amid thrilling sceneslike those while I was here among degrading scenes like these. My lovefor Martin was now like a wound and I resolved that, come what might, before he reached Castle Raa I should liberate myself from the thraldomof my false position. 

Father Dan's counsels had faded away by this time. Though I had prayedfor strength to bear my burden there had been no result, and onemorning, standing before the figure of the Virgin in my bedroom, I feltan impulse to blow out her lamp and never to light it again. 

The end of it all was that I determined to see the Bishop and myfather's advocate, Mr. Curphy, and perhaps my father himself, that Imight know one way or the other where I was, and what was to become ofme. But how to do this I could not see, having a houseful of people whowere nominally my guests. 

Fortune--ill-fortune--favoured me. News came that my father had suddenlyfallen ill of some ailment that puzzled the doctors, and making this myreason and excuse I spoke to my husband, asking if I might go home fortwo or three days. 

"Why not?" he said, in the tone of one who meant, "Who's keeping you?"

Then in my weakness I spoke to Alma, who answered:

"Certainly, my sweet girl. We shall miss you _dreadfully_, but it's yourduty. And then you'll see that _dear_ Mr. . . . What d'ye callum?"

Finally, feeling myself a poor, pitiful hypocrite, I apologised for mygoing away to the guests also, and they looked as if they might say:"We'll survive it, perhaps. "

The night before my departure my maid said:

"Perhaps your ladyship has forgotten that my time's up, but I'll stayuntil you return if you want me to. "

I asked her if she would like to stay with me altogether and she said:

"Indeed I should, my lady. Any woman would like to stay with a goodmistress, if she _is_ a little quick sometimes. And if you don't want meto go to your father's I may be of some use to you here before you comeback again. "

I saw that her mind was still running on divorce, but I did not reproveher now, for mine was turning in the same direction. 

Next morning most of the guests came to the hail door to see me off, andthey gave me a shower of indulgent smiles as the motor-car moved away. 

FIFTY-NINTH CHAPTER

Before going to my father's house I went to the Bishop's. Bishop's Courtis at the other side of the island, and it was noon before I drove underits tall elm trees, in which a vast concourse of crows seemed to beholding a sort of general congress. 

The Bishop was then at his luncheon, and after luncheon (so his liveriedservant told me) he usually took a siesta. I have always thought it wasunfortunate for my interview that it came between his food and hissleep. 

The little reception-room into which I was shown was luxuriously, not tosay gorgeously, appointed, with easy chairs and sofas, a large portraitof the Pope, signed by the Holy Father himself, and a number of picturesof great people of all kinds--dukes, marquises, lords, counts--as wellas photographs of fashionable ladies in low dress inscribed in severallanguages to "My dear Father in God the Lord Bishop of Ellan. "

The Bishop came to me after a few minutes, smiling and apparently atpeace with all the world. Except that he wore a biretta he wasdressed--as in Rome--in his long black soutane with its innumerablebuttons, his silver-buckled shoes, his heavy gold chain and jewelledcross. 

He welcomed me in his smooth and suave manner, asking if he could offerme a little refreshment; but, too full of my mission to think of eatingand drinking, I plunged immediately into the object of my visit. 

"Monsignor, " I said, "I am in great trouble. It is about my marriage. "

The smile was smitten away from the Bishop's face by this announcement. 

"I am sorry, " he said. "Nothing serious, I trust?"

I told him it was very serious, and straightway I began on the spiritualpart of my grievance--that my husband did not love me, that he lovedanother woman, that the sacred sacrament of my marriage. . . . 

"Wait, " said the Bishop, and he rose to close the window, for theclamour of the crows was deafening--a trial must have been going on inthe trees. Returning to his seat he said:

"Dear lady, you must understand that there is one offence, and only one, which in all Christian countries and civilised communities is consideredsufficient to constitute a real and tangible grievance. Have you anyevidence of that?"

I knew what he meant and I felt myself colouring to the roots of myhair. But gulping down my shame I recounted the story of the scene inParis and gave a report of my maid's charges and surmises. 

"Humph!" said the Bishop, and I saw in a moment that he was going tobelittle my proofs. 

"Little or no evidence of your own, apparently. Chiefly that of yourmaid. And ladies' maids are notorious mischief-makers. "

"But it's true, " I said. "My husband will not deny it. He cannot. "

"So far as I am able to observe what passes in the world, " said theBishop, "men in such circumstances always can and do deny it. "

I felt my hands growing moist under my gloves. I thought the Bishop wastrying to be blind to what he did not wish to see. 

"But I'm right, I'm sure I'm right, " I said. 

"Well, assuming you _are_ right, what is it, dear lady, that you wish meto do?"

For some minutes I felt like a fool, but I stammered out at length thatI had come for his direction and to learn what relief the Church couldgive me. 

"H'm!" said the Bishop, and then crossing one leg over the other, andfumbling the silver buckle of his shoe, he said:

"The Church, dear lady, does indeed provide alleviation in cases of direnecessity. It provides the relief of separation--always deploring thenecessity and hoping for ultimate reconciliation. But to sanction theseparation of a wife from her husband because--pardon me, I do not saythis is your case--she finds that he does not please her, orbecause--again I do not say this is your case--she fancies that somebodyelse pleases her better. . . . "

"Monsignor, " I said, feeling hot and dizzy, "we need not discussseparation. I am thinking of something much more serious. "

Never shall I forget the expression of the Bishop's face. He lookedaghast. 

"My good lady, surely you are not thinking of divorce?"

I think my head must have dropped as in silent assent, for in aperemptory and condemnatory manner the Bishop took me to task, asking ifI did not know that the Catholic Church did not recognise divorce underany circumstances, and if I had forgotten what the Holy Father himself(pointing up to the portrait) had said to me--that when I entered intothe solemn contract of holy matrimony I was to do so in the fullconsciousness that it could not be broken but by death. 

"The love in which husband and wife contract to hold each other in holywedlock is typified by the love of Christ for His Church, and as the onecan never be broken, neither can the other. "

"But my husband does not love me, " I said. "Neither do I love him, andtherefore the contract between us is broken already. "

The Bishop was very severe with me for this, telling me that as a goodchild of the Church, I must never, never say that again, for thoughmarriage was a contract it differed from all other contracts whatsoever. 

"When you married your husband, dear lady, you were bound to him not byyour own act alone, but by a mysterious power from which neither of youcan ever free yourself. The power that united you was God, and whom Godhas joined together no man may put asunder. "

I felt my head drooping. The Bishop was saying what I had always beentaught, though in the torment of my trouble and the fierce fire of mytemptation I had forgotten it. 

"The civil law _might_ divorce you, " continued the Bishop. "I don'tknow--I can say nothing about that. But it would have _no right_ to doso because the law can have no right to undo what God Himself has done. "

Oh, it was cruel! I felt as if the future of my life were darkeningbefore me--as if the iron bars of a prison were closing upon me, andfetters were being fixed on every limb. 

"But even if the civil law _could_ and _would_ divorce you, " said theBishop, "think of the injury you would be inflicting on the Church. Yours was what is called a mixed marriage, and the Church does notfavour such marriages, but it consented in this case, and why? Becauseit hoped to bring back an erring family in a second generation to thefold of the faith. Yet what would you be doing? Without waiting for asecond generation you would he defeating its purpose. "

A cold chill seemed to creep to my heart at these words. Was it thelost opportunity the Bishop was thinking of, instead of the sufferingwoman with her bruised and bleeding soul?

I rose to go. The Bishop rose with me, and began to counsel forgiveness. 

"Even if you _have_ suffered injury, dear lady, " he said--"I don't sayyou haven't--isn't it possible to forgive? Remember, forgiveness is adivine virtue, enjoined on us all, and especially on a woman towards theman she has married. Only think! How many women have to practiseit--every day, all the world over!"

"Ah, well!" I said, and walked to the door. 

The Bishop walked with me, urging me, as a good daughter of the Church, to live at peace with my husband, whatever his faults, and when mychildren came (as please God they would) to "instil into them the truefaith with all a mother's art, a mother's tenderness, " so that theobject of my marriage might be fulfilled, and a good Catholic become theheir to Castle Raa. 

"So the Church can do nothing for me?" I said. 

"Nothing but pray, dear lady, " said the Bishop. 

When I left him my heart was in fierce rebellion; and, since the Churchcould do nothing, I determined to see if the law could do anything, so Iordered my chauffeur to drive to the house of my father's advocate atHolmtown. 

The trial in the trees was over by this time, and a dead crow tumbledfrom one of the tall elms as we passed out of the grounds. 

Holmtown is a little city on the face of our bleak west coast, dominatedby a broad stretch of sea, and having the sound of the waves alwaysrumbling over it. Mr. Curphy's house faced the shore and his office wasan upper room plainly furnished with a writing desk, a deal table, ladenwith law books and foolscap papers, a stiff arm-chair, covered withAmerican leather, three or four coloured engravings of judges in red andermine, a photograph of the lawyer himself in wig and gown, anilluminated certificate of his membership of a legal society, and anumber of lacquered tin boxes, each inscribed with the name of aclient--the largest box bearing the name of "Daniel O'Neill. "

My father's advocate received me with his usual bland smile, gave me hisclammy fat hand, put me to sit in the arm-chair, hoped my unexpectedvisit did not presage worse news from the Big house, and finally askedme what he could do. 

I told my story over again, omitting my sentimental grievances andcoming quickly, and with less delicacy, to the grosser facts of myhusband's infidelity. 

The lawyer listened with his head aside, his eyes looking out on the seaand his white fingers combing his long brown beard, and before I hadfinished I could see that he too, like the Bishop, had determined to seenothing. 

"You may be right, " he began. . . . 

"I _am_ right!" I answered. 

"But even if you _are_, I am bound to tell you that adultery is notenough of itself as a ground for divorce. "

"Not enough?"

"If you were a man it would be, but being a woman you must establishcruelty as well. "

"Cruelty? Isn't it all cruelty?" I asked. 

"In the human sense, yes; in the legal sense, no, " answered the lawyer. 

And then he proceeded to explain to me that in this country, unlike someothers, before a woman could obtain a divorce from her husband she hadto prove that he had not only been unfaithful to her, but that he hadused violence to her, struck her in the face perhaps, threatened her orendangered her life or health. 

"Your husband hasn't done that, has he? No? I thought not. After allhe's a gentleman. Therefore there is only one other ground on which youcould establish a right to divorce, namely desertion, and your husbandis not likely to run away. In fact, he couldn't. It isn't to hisinterest. We've seen to all that--_here_, " and smiling again, the lawyerpatted the top of the lacquered box that bore my father's name. 

I was dumbfounded. Even more degrading than the fetters whereby theChurch bound me to my marriage were the terms on which the law wouldrelease me. 

"But assuming that you _could_ obtain a divorce, " said the lawyer, "whatgood would it do you? You would have to relinquish your title. "

"I care nothing about my title, " I replied. 

"And your position. "

"I care nothing about that either. "

"Come, come, " said the lawyer, patting my arm as if I had been an angrychild on the verge of tears. "Don't let a fit of pique or spleen breakup a marriage that is so suitable from the points of property andposition. And then think of your good father. Why did he spend all thatmoney in setting a ruined house on its legs again? That he might carryon his name in a noble family, and through your children, and yourchildren's children. . . . "

"Then the law can do nothing for me?" I said, feeling sick and sore. 

"Sorry, very sorry, but under present conditions, as far as I can yetsee, nothing, " said the lawyer. 

"Good-day, sir, " I said, and before he could have known what I was doingI had leapt up, left the room, and was hurrying downstairs. 

My heart was in still fiercer rebellion now. I would go home. I wouldappeal to my father. Hard as he had always been with me he was at leasta man, not a cold abstraction, like the Church and the law, withoutbowels of compassion or sense of human suffering. 

SIXTIETH CHAPTER

Although I had sent word that I was coming home, there was no one towelcome me when I arrived. 

Aunt Bridget was out shopping, and Betsy Beauty (in the sulks with me, as I afterwards heard, for not asking her to the house-party) had runupstairs on hearing our horn, so I went direct to my father's room. 

Nessy MacLeod answered my knock, but instead of opening the door to letme in, she slid out like a cat and closed it behind her. Never had herungainly figure, her irregular features, and her red head seemed to meso repugnant. I saw at once that she was giving herself the airs ofhousekeeper, and I noticed that she was wearing the bunch of keys whichused to dangle from Aunt Bridget's waist when I was a child. 

"Your father is ill, " she said. 

I told her I knew that, and it was one of the reasons I was there. 

"Seriously ill, " she said, standing with her back to the door. "Thedoctor says he is to be kept perfectly quiet. "

Indignant at the effrontery of the woman who was trying to keep me outof my father's room, I said:

"Let me pass, please. "

"S'sh! He has a temperature, and I don't choose that anybody shalldisturb him to-day. "

"Let me pass, " I repeated, and I must have pitched my voice so high thatmy father heard it. 

"Is that Mary?" came from the other side of the door, whereupon Nessybeat a retreat, and at the next moment I was in my father's room. 

His massive and powerful head was propped up with pillows in thecamp-bed which was all he ever slept on, and he was looking so ill andchanged in so short a time that I was shocked, as well as ashamed at theselfishness of having thought only of myself all the morning. 

But he would listen to no sympathy, protesting there was little ornothing the matter with him, that "Conrad was croaking about cancer, "but the doctor was a fool. 

"What about yourself, though?" he said. "Great doings at the Castle, they're telling me. "

I thought this a favourable opportunity to speak about my own affairs, so I began on my story again, and though I found it harder to tell nowthat my listener was my father, I struggled on and on, as well as Icould for the emotion that was choking me. 

I thought he would pity me. I expected him to be angry. Although he wasshowing me some of the contemptuous tenderness which he had alwaysassumed towards my mother, yet I was his daughter, and I felt sure thathe would want to leap out of bed that he might take my husband by thethroat and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat. But what happened wassomething quite different. 

Hardly had I begun when he burst out laughing. 

"God bless my soul, " he cried, "you're never going to lose your stomachover a thing like that?"

I thought he had not understood me, so I tried to speak plainer. 

"I see, " he said. "Sweethearting some other woman, is he? Well, what ofit? He isn't the first husband who has done the like, and I guess hewon't be the last. "

Still I thought I had not made myself clear, so I said my husband hadbeen untrue to me, that his infidelities under my own roof had degradedme in my own eyes and everybody else's, that I could not bear to livesuch a life any longer and consequently. . . . 

"Consequently, " said my father, "you come to me to fight your battlesfor you. No, no, fight them yourself, gel. No father-in-law ought tointerfere. "

It was a man's point of view I suppose, but I was ready to cry withvexation and disappointment, and though I conquered the impulse to dothat I could go no farther. 

"Who's the woman?" he asked. 

I told him it was one of our house-party. 

"Then cut her out. I guess you're clever enough to do it, whoever sheis. You've got the looks too, and I don't grudge you the money. Cut herout--that's the best advice I can give you. Make your husband see you'rethe better woman of the two. Cut her out, I'm saying, and don't comewhining here like a cry-baby, who runs to her grandmother'sapron-strings at the first scratch she gets outside. "

He had been reaching forward, but he now fell back on his pillows, saying:

"I see how it is, though. Women without children are always vapouringabout their husbands, as if married life ought to be a garden of Eden. One woman, one man, and all the rest of the balderdash. I sot your AuntBridget on you before, gel, and I'll have to do it again I'm thinking. But go away now. If I'm to get better I must have rest. Nessy!"(calling) "I've a mort o' things to do and most everything is on myshoulders. Nessy! My medicine! Nessy! Nessy! Where in the world has thatgirl gone to?"

"I'm here, Daniel, " said Nessy MacLeod coming back to the room; and as Iwent out and passed down the corridor, with a crushed and broken spiritand the tears ready to gush from my eyes, I heard her coaxing him in hersubmissive and insincere tones, while he blamed and scolded her. 

Half an hour afterwards Aunt Bridget came to me in my mother's room. Never in my life before had I been pleased to see her. She, at least, would see my situation with a woman's eyes. But I was doomed to anotherdisappointment. 

"Goodness me, girl, " she cried, "what's this your father tells me? Oneof your own guests, is it? That one with the big eyes I'll go bail. Well, serve you right, I say, for bringing a woman like that into thehouse with your husband--so smart and such a quality toss with her. Ifyou were lonely coming home why didn't you ask your aunt or your firstcousin? There would have been no trouble with your husband then--notabout me at all events. But what are you thinking of doing?"

"Getting a divorce, " I answered, firmly, for my heart was now aflame. 

If I had held a revolver in Aunt Bridget's face she could not havelooked more shocked. 

"Mary O'Neill, are you mad?" she cried. "Divorce indeed! No woman ofour family has ever disgraced herself like that. What will your fathersay? What's to happen to Betsy Beauty? What are people going to thinkabout me?"

I answered that I had not made my marriage, and those who had made itmust take the consequences. 

"What does that matter now? Hundreds of thousands of women have marriedthe wrong man of their own free will, but if every woman who has made arue-bargain were to try to get out of it your way where would the worldbe, I wonder? Perhaps you think you could marry somebody else, but youcouldn't. What decent man wants to marry a divorced woman even if she_is_ the injured party?"

"Then you think I ought to submit--tamely submit to such infidelities?"I asked. 

"Sakes alive, " said Aunt Bridget, "what else can you do? Men arepolygamous animals, and we women have to make up our minds to it. Goodness knows I had to when the old colonel used to go hanging aroundthose English barmaids at the 'Cock and Hen. ' Be a little blind, girl--that's what nine wives out of ten have to be every day and everynight and all the world over. "

"Will that make my husband any better?" I asked. 

"I don't say it will, " said Aunt Bridget. "It will make _you_ better, though. What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve for. That'ssomething, isn't it?"

When I went to bed that night my whole soul was in revolt. The Church, the law, society, parental power, all the conventions andrespectabilities seemed to be in a conspiracy to condone my husband'soffence and to make me his scapegoat, doomed to a life of hypocrisy andtherefore immorality and shame. I would die rather than endure it. Yes, I would die that very day rather than return to my husband's house andgo through the same ordeal again. 

But next morning when I thought of Martin, as I always did on firstawakening, I told myself that I would live and be a clean woman in myown eyes _whatever the World might think of me_. 

Martin was now my only refuge, so I would tell him everything. It wouldbe hard to do that, but no matter, I would crush down my modesty andtell him everything. And then, whatever he told me to do I should do it. 

I knew quite well what my resolution meant, what it implied andinvolved, but still I thought, "_Whatever he tells me to do I will doit_. "

I remembered what the Countess in Rome had said about a life of"complete emancipation" as an escape from unhappy marriage, and even yetI thought "_Whatever he tells me to do I will do it_. "

After coming to that conclusion I felt more at ease and got up to dress. 

It was a beautiful morning, and I looked down into the orchard, wherethe apples were reddening under the sunshine and the gooseberries wereripening under their hanging boughs, when in the quiet summer air Iheard a footstep approaching. 

An elderly woman in an old-fashioned quakerish bonnet was coming up thedrive. She carried a little bunch of red and white roses, and her face, which was very sweet and simple, wore the pathetic expression of a childin trouble. 

It was Martin's mother. She was coming to see me, and at the first sightof her something told me that my brave resolution was about to bebroken, and I was going to be shaken to the depths of my being. 

I heard the bell of the front door ringing. After a moment a maid cameup and said:

"Mrs. Doctor Conrad has called to see your ladyship. "

"Bring her here, " I answered. 

My heart was in my mouth already. 

SIXTY-FIRST CHAPTER

When Martin's mother came into the room she looked nervous and almostfrightened, as if she had charged herself with a mission which she wasafraid to fulfil. But I put her to sit in my mother's easy chair and saton the arm of it myself, and then she seemed calmer and morecomfortable. 

In spite of the silver threads in the smooth hair under her poke bonnether dear face was still the face of a child, and never before had itseemed to me so helpless and child-like. 

After a moment we began to talk of Martin. I said it must be a greathappiness to her to have him back after his long and perilous voyage;and she answered that it was, but his visit was so short, only four daysaltogether, although the doctor and she had looked forward to it solong. 

"That's not Martin's fault, though, " she said. "He's such a good son. Ireally, really think no mother ever had such a good son. But whenchildren grow up they can't always be thinking of the old people, canthey? That's why I say to the doctor, 'Doctor, ' I say, 'perhaps we werethe same ourselves when we were young and first loved each other. '"

Already I thought I saw vaguely what the dear soul had come to tell me, but I only said I supposed Martin was still with them. 

She told me no, he had gone to King George's. That was his old school, and being prize-giving day the masters had asked him to the sports andto the dinner that was to be given that night before the breaking-up forthe holidays. 

"The boys will give him a cheer, I know they will, " she said. 

I said of course he would be back to-morrow, but again she said no; hehad gone for good, and they had said good-bye to him. When he left KingGeorge's he was to go on to Castle Raa. Didn't I know that? He had saidhe would telegraph to me. But being from home perhaps I had not yetreceived his message. Oh yes, he was going on to the Castle to-morrownight and would stay there until it was time to leave the island. 

"I'm so glad, " I said, hardly knowing with what fervour I had said it, until I saw the same expression of fear come back to the sweet old face. 

"Martin will be glad, too, " she said, "and that's why I've cometo see you. "

"That?"

"You won't be cross with me, will you? But Martin is so fond ofyou. . . . He always has been fond of you, ever since he was aboy . . . But this time. . . . "

"Yes?"

"This time I thought . . . I really, really thought he was too fond ofyou. "

I had to hold my breast to keep down the cry of joy that was rising tomy throat, but the dear soul saw nothing. 

"Not that he said so--not to say said so, but it's a mother to seethings, isn't it? And he was talking and talking so much about MaryO'Neill that I was frightened--really frightened. "

"Frightened?"

"He's so tender-hearted, you see. And then you . . . You're such awonderful woman grown. Tommy the Mate says there hasn't been the like ofyou on this island since they laid your mother under the sod. It's truthenough, too--gospel truth. And Martin--Martin says there isn't yourequal, no, not in London itself neither. So . . . So, " she said, trembling and stammering, "I was thinking . . . I was thinking he wasonly flesh and blood like the rest of us, poor boy, and if he got to be_too_ fond of you . . . Now that you're married and have a husband, youknow. . . . "

The trembling and stammering stopped her for a moment. 

"They're saying you are not very happy in your marriage neither. Timesand times I've heard people saying he isn't kind to you, and theymarried you against your will. . . . So I was telling myself if that'sso, and Martin and you came together now, and you encouraged him, andlet him go on and anything came of it . . . Any trouble or disgrace orthe like of that . . . It would be such a terrible cruel shocking thingfor the boy . . . Just when everybody's talking about him and speakingso well too. "

It was out at last. Her poor broken-hearted story was told. Being amarried woman, unhappily married, too, I was a danger to her belovedson, and she had come to me in her sweet, unmindful, motherlyselfishness to ask me to protect him _against myself_. 

"Whiles and whiles I've been thinking of it, " she said. "'What will Ido?' I've been asking myself, and sometimes I've been thinking I wouldspeak to Martin. I didn't dare do it, though. But when I heard lastnight that you had come home to see your father, I said: 'Doctor, I'llgo over and speak to herself. ' 'You'll never do that, Christian Ann, 'said the doctor. 'Yes, I will, ' I said. 'I'll speak to the youngmistress herself. She may be a great lady now, but haven't I nursed heron my knee? She'll never do anything to harm my boy, if I ask her notto. No indeed she won't. Not Mary O'Neill. I'll never believe it of her. Never in this world. '"

The sweet old face was beaming but it was wet with tears, too, and whiletrying to get out her pocket-handkerchief, she was fumbling with theflowers which she was still holding and passing from hand to hand. 

"Let me take the roses, " I said as well as I could, for I could scarcelysay anything. 

"I brought them for you, " she said, and then she laughed, a littleconfusedly, at her own forgetfulness. 

"To be sure they're nothing to the green-house ones you'll have at theCastle, but I thought you'd like them for all that. They're from thetree outside the window of your own little room. We call it your roomstill--the one you slept in when you came in your little velvet frockand pinnie, singing carols to my door. 'Mary O'Neill's room, ' Martincalled it then, and it's been the same to us ever since. "

This touched me so deeply that, before I knew what I was doing, I wasputting my arm about her waist and asking her to tell me what she wishedme to do and I would do it. 

"Will you, though?" she said, and then one by one she propounded theartless little schemes she had concocted to cure Martin of what sheconceived to be his love for me. 

Her first thought was that I might make excuse of my father's illness toremain where I was until the time came for Martin to leave the island;but she repented of this almost immediately, remembering that Martin wasset on seeing me, ('I _must_ see her, ' he had said) and if he did notsee me he would be so downhearted. 

Then she thought I might praise up my husband to Martin, saying what afine man he was to be sure, and how good he had been to me, and what aproud woman I was to be married to him; but she was ashamed of thatalmost as soon as she had said it, for it might not be true, and Martinmight see I was pretending. 

Finally, she suggested that in order to create a coolness between Martinand myself I might try not to be so nice to him, speaking short to himsometimes, and even harsh and angry; but no, that would be too cruel, especially from me, after all these years, just when he was going so faraway, too, and only the Lord and the blessed saints knew what was tobecome of him. 

It was Martin, Martin, always Martin. Still in her sweet motherlyselfishness she could think of nobody else. Fondly as she loved me, itnever occurred to her for a moment that if I did what she wished andsent Martin away from me, I too would suffer. But a harder heart thanmine would have melted at the sight of her perplexity and distress, andwhen with a helpless look she said:

"I don't know what you are to do--I really, really don't, " I comfortedher (needing comfort so much myself), and told her I would find a way ofmy own to do what she desired. 

"Will you, though?" she said. 

"Indeed I will. "

"And you won't send him away sore-hearted, either?"

"Indeed I won't. "

"I knew you would say that. May the Lord and His holy Mother bless you!"

She was weeping tender, copious, blessed tears by this time, but therewere smiles behind them. 

"Not that there's another woman in the world I would rather give him toif things were as they used to be. But they're different now, are theynot?" she asked. 

"Yes, they're different now, " I answered. 

"But are you sure you're not cross with me for coming?"

"Oh, no, no, " I said, and it was all I _could_ say for my voice wasfailing me. 

She gave a sigh of inexpressible relief and then rose to go. 

"I must be going now. The doctor is digging in the garden and he hasn'thad his breakfast. But I put the pot on the _slouree_ to boil and itwill be ready for the porridge. "

She got as far as the door and then turned and said:

"I wish I had a photo of you--a right one, just as you are at this veryminute. I'd hang it in your own room, and times and times in the day I'dbe running upstairs to look at it. But it's all as one. I've got a photoof you here, " (touching her breast) "and sometimes I can see it as plainas plain. "

I could not speak after that, but I kissed her as she was going out, andshe said:

"That's nice, now! Good-bye, _my chree!_ You'll not be going home untilto-morrow, it's like, so perhaps I'll be putting another sight on you. Good-bye!"

I went to the window to watch her as she walked down the drive. She waswiping her eyes, but her head was up and I thought her step was light, and I was sure her face was shining. 

God bless her! The dear sweet woman! Such women as she is, and my motherwas--so humble and loving, so guileless and pure, never saying an unkindword or thinking an unkind thought--are the flowers of the world thatmake the earth smell sweet. 

 * * * * *

When she was gone and I remembered the promise I had made to her I askedmyself what was to become of me. If I could neither divorce my husbandunder any circumstances without breaking a sacrament of the Church, norlove Martin and be loved by him without breaking the heart of hismother, where was I?

I intended to go home the following morning; I was to meet Martin thefollowing night. What was I to say? What was I to do?

All day long these questions haunted me and I could find no answers. Buttowards evening I took my troubles where I had often taken them--toFather Dan. 

SIXTY-SECOND CHAPTER

The door of the Presbytery was opened by Father Dan's Irish housekeeper, a good old soul whose attitude to her master was that of a "moithered"mother to a wilful child. 

All the way up the narrow staircase to his room, she grumbled about hisreverence. Unless he was sickening for the scarlet fever she didn't knowin her seven sinses what was a-matter with him these days. He was aswhite as a ghost, and as thin as a shadder, and no wonder neither, forhe didn't eat enough to keep body and soul together. 

Yesterday itself she had cooked him a chicken as good as I could get atthe Big House; "done to a turn, too, with a nice bit of Irish bacon ontop, and a bowl of praties biled in their jackets and a basin ofbeautiful new buttermilk;" but no, never a taste nor a sup did he takeof it. 

"It's just timpting Providence his reverence is, and it'll be glory toGod if you'll tell him so. "

"What's that you're saying about his reverence, Mrs. Cassidy?" criedFather Dan from the upper landing. 

"I'm saying you're destroying yourself with your fasting and praying andyour midnight calls at mountain cabins, and never a ha'porth of anythingin your stomach to do it on. "

"Whisht then, Mrs. Cassidy, it's tay-time, isn't it? So just step backto your kitchen and put on your kittle, and bring up two of your bestchina cups and saucers, and a nice piece of buttered toast, notforgetting a thimbleful of something neat, and then it's the mightyproud woman ye'll be entoirely to be waiting for once on the first ladyin the island. . . . Come in, my daughter, come in. "

He was laughing as he let loose his Irish tongue, but I could see thathis housekeeper had not been wrong and that he looked worn and troubled. 

As soon as he had taken me into his cosy study and put me to sit in thebig chair before the peat and wood fire, I would have begun on myerrand, but not a word would he hear until the tea had come up and I hadtaken a cup of it. 

Then stirring the peats for light as well as warmth, (for the room wasdark with its lining of books, and the evening was closing in) he said:

"Now what is it? Something serious--I can see that much. "

"It _is_ serious, Father Dan. "

"Tell me then, " he said, and as well as I could I told him my story. 

I told him that since I had seen him last, during that violent scene atCastle Raa, my relations with my husband had become still more painful;I told him that, seeing I could not endure any longer the degradation ofthe life I was living, I had thought about divorce; I told him thatgoing first to the Bishop and afterwards to my father's advocate I hadlearned that neither the Church nor the law, for their differentreasons, could grant me the relief I required; and finally, in a faintvoice (almost afraid to hear myself speak it), I told him my solemn andsacred secret--that whatever happened I could not continue to live whereI was now living because I loved somebody else than my husband. 

While I was speaking Father Dan was shuffling his feet and plucking athis shabby cassock, and as soon as I had finished he flashed out on mewith an anger I had never seen in his face or heard in his voice before. 

"I know who it is, " he said. "It's Martin Conrad. "

I was so startled by this that I was beginning to ask how he knew, whenhe cried:

"Never mind how I know. Perhaps you think an old priest has no eyes foranything but his breviary, eh? It's young Martin, isn't it?"

"Yes. "

"The wretch, the rascal, the scoundrel! If he ever dares to come to thishouse again, I'll slam the door in his face. "

I knew he loved Martin almost as much as I did, so I paid no heed to thenames he was calling him, but I tried to say that I alone had been toblame, and that Martin had done nothing. 

"Don't tell me he has done nothing, " cried Father Dan. "I know what hehas done He has told you he loves you, hasn't he?"

"No. "

"He has been colloguing with you, then, and getting you to say things?"

"Never. "

"Pitying and sympathising with you, anyway, in your relations with yourhusband?"

"Not for one moment. "

"He had better not! Big man as he is in England now, I'll warm hisjacket for him if he comes here making mischief with a child of mine. But thank the Lord and the holy saints he's going away soon, so you'llsee no more of him. "

"But he is coming to Castle Raa, " I said, "and I am to see him to-morrownight. "

"That too! The young scoundrel!"

I explained that my husband had invited him, being prompted to do so bythe other woman. 

"Worse and worse!" cried Father Dan. "Don't you see that they're layinga trap for you, and like two young fools you're walking directly intoit. But no matter! You mustn't go. "

I told him that I should be compelled to do so, for Martin was coming onmy account only, and I could neither tell him the truth nor make anexcuse that would not be a falsehood. 

"Well, well, perhaps you're right there. It's not the best way to meettemptation to be always running away from it. That's Irish, but it'strue enough, though. You must conquer this temptation, my child; youmust fight it and overcome it. "

"But I've tried and tried and I cannot, " I said. 

And then I told him the story of my struggle--how love had been nohappiness to me but only a cruel warfare, how I had suffered and prayedand gone to mass and confession, yet all to no purpose, for my affectionfor Martin was like a blazing fire which nothing could put out. 

Father Dan's hands and lips were trembling while I spoke and I could seethat he was shuddering with pity for me, so I went on to say that if Godhad put this pure and holy love into my heart could it be wrong--

"Stop a minute, " cried Father Dan. "Who says God put it there? And whoinformed you it was pure and holy? Let us see where we are. Come, now. You say the Bishop told you that you could never be divorced under anycircumstances?"

"Yes. "

"Yet you wish to leave your husband?"

"How can I help it? The life I have been living is too horrible. "

"Never mind that now. You wish to leave your husband, don't you?"

"I . . . I must. "

"And you want to go to this . . . This young . . . In short, you want togo to Martin Conrad? That's the plain truth, isn't it? Don't deny it. Very well, let us call things by their proper names. What is the fact?You are asking me--me, your spiritual Father--to allow you to live alife of open adultery. That's what it comes to. You know it is, and Godand His holy Mother have mercy on your soul!"

I was so startled and shocked by his fierce assault, and by the cruelclimax it had come to, that I flung up my hands to my face and kept themthere, for I felt as if my brain had been stunned and my heart wasbursting. 

How long I sat like this, with my hidden face to the fire, I do notknow; but after a long silence in which I heard nothing but my ownheaving breath, I became aware that Father Dan had drawn one of my handsdown to his knee and was smoothing it with his own. 

"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth, " hesaid. "It's hard to bear; I know it's hard; but it's as hard for him asfor you, my child. Think--only think what he is trying to save you from. If you do what you wish to do, you will put yourself out of communion. If you put yourself out of communion, you will cease to be a Catholic. What will become of you then, my daughter? What will be left to replacethe consolations of the Church--in sorrow, in suffering, in the hour ofdeath? Have you never thought of that?"

I never had. It was thrilling through and through me. 

"You say you cannot live any longer with your husband because he hasbroken the vow he made to you at your marriage. But think how many manythousands of poor women all the world over are doing it everyday--living with adulterous husbands for the sake of their homes andchildren. And not for the sake of their homes and children only, but forthe sake of their souls and their religion. Blessed, blessed martyrs, though we know nothing about them, holding society and the Church andthe human family together. "

I was trembling all over. I felt as if Father Dan were trying to takeaway from me the only sweet and precious thing in my life that was left. 

"Then you think you cannot live without the one you love, because allyour heart is full of him. But think of the holy women, the holy saints, who have gone through the same temptation--fighting against it with allthe strength of their souls until the very wounds of our blessed Lordhave been marked on their bodies. "

He was creeping closer to my side. His voice was quivering at my ear. Iwas struggling hard, and still trembling all over. 

"Hold fast by the Church, my child. It is your only refuge. Rememberthat God made your marriage and you cannot break it without forsakingyour faith. Can anything be good that is bought at such a price? Nothingin this world! When you meet to-morrow night--you two children--tell himthat. Tell him I told you to say so. . . . I love you both. Don't breakyour old priest's heart. He's in trouble enough for you already. Don'tlet him think that he must lose you altogether. And then remember yourmother, too--that saint in heaven who suffered so long and was patient. . . Everything will depend upon you, my child. In matters of this kindthe woman is the stronger vessel. Be strong for him also. Renounce yourguilty love, my daughter--"

"But I cannot, I cannot, " I said. "I love him, and I cannot give himup!"

"Let us ask God to help you, " said Father Dan, and still holding my handhe drew me down to my knees and knelt beside me. The room was dark bythis time, and only the sullen glow from the peat fire was on our faces. 

Then in a low voice, so low that it was like his throbbing whisperbefore the altar, when he raised the Sacred host, Father Dan prayed forme (calling me his dear child whom God had committed to his care) that Imight keep my marriage vow and be saved from the temptation to break it. 

His beautiful prayer or his throbbing voice, or both together, had agreat effect upon me, and when I rose to my feet, I felt stronger. Although Martin was as dear to me as ever, I thought I saw my way atlast. If he loved me as I loved him, I had to be brave for both of us. Ihad to oppose to the carnal instinct of love the spiritual impulse ofrenunciation. Yes, yes, that was what I had to do. 

Father Dan saw me to the door. 

"Give my love to my boy, " he said, "and don't forget what I told you totell him. "

"I'll tell him, " I replied, for though I knew my heart was bleeding Ifelt calm and more courageous. 

It was milking time and the cows were lowing in the byre when I crossedthe fields and the farm-yard on my way back to my father's house. 

Early next morning I left it for Castle Raa. 

SIXTY-THIRD CHAPTER

Although it was mid-day before I reached the Castle, the gate to thepark had not been opened, the drive was deserted and even the great doorto the house itself was closed. 

And when, in answer to my ringing, one of the maids came after a certaindelay, wearing neither apron nor cap, I found the hall empty and no signof life in the house, except a shrill chorus of laughter which came fromthe servants' quarters. 

"What's the meaning of this?" I asked, but before the girl could reply, Price who had come down to take my wraps said:

"I'll tell your ladyship presently. "

As we were going upstairs she told me that the entire house-party hadthat morning gone off on a cruise in Mr. Eastcliff's yacht, that theywould be away several days, and that Madame had left a letter for mewhich was supposed to explain everything. 

I found it on the mantelpiece in my boudoir under an open telegram whichhad been stuck into the edge of the bevelled glass. The telegram, whichwas addressed to me, was from Martin. 

 _"Expect to arrive to-morrow evening. Staying until Wednesday afternoon. If not convenient wire Principal's House, King George's College. "_

"To-morrow'?"

"That means to-day, " said Price. "The telegram came yesterday. Madameopened it and she told me to say--"

"Let me read her letter first, " I said. 

The letter ran as follows:

 _"My Dearest Mary, "You will be astonished to find the house empty and all your racketty guests gone. Let me explain, and if you are angry about what has happened you must lay all the blame on me. 

 "Well, you see, my dear, it was arranged nearly a month ago that before we left your delightful house we should make a little cruise round your charming island. But we had not expected that this would come off so soon, when suddenly and unexpectedly that silly Mr. Eastcliff, who has no more brains than a spring chicken, remembered that he had promised to visit a friend who has taken a shoot in Skye. Result--we had to make the cruise immediately or not at all, and yet behold! our hostess was away on an urgent call of sickness, and what in the world were we to do without her?

 "Everybody was in a quandary--that wise Mr. Vivian saying it would be 'jolly bad form by Jove' to go without you, while Mr. Eastcliffs 'deelightfully vicked' little Camilla declared it would be 'vilaynous, ' and your husband vowed that his Margaret Mary could not possibly be left behind. 

 "It was then that a certain friend of yours took the liberty of remembering that you did not like the sea, and that even if you had been here and had consented to go with us it would have been only out of the sweetness of your heart, which I've always known to be the tenderest and most unselfish in the world. 

 "This seemed to satisfy the whole house and everybody was at ease, when lo! down on us like a thunderbolt came the telegram from Mr. Conrad. Thinking it might require to be repeated, I took the liberty of opening it, and then we were in a plight, I assure you. 

 "What on earth was he to think of our leaving the house when he was on the point of arriving? And, above all, how were we to support the disappointment of missing him--some of us, the women especially, and myself in particular, being just crazy to see him again?

 "This nearly broke down our plans altogether, but once more I came to the rescue by remembering that Mr. Conrad was not coming to see us but you, and that the very kindest thing we could do for a serious person of his kind would be to take our racketty presence out of the way. 

 "That contented everybody except my mother, who--would you believe it?--had gotten some prudish notions into her head about the impropriety of leaving you alone, and declared her intention of staying behind to keep you in countenance! We soon laughed her out of that, though, and now, to relieve you of her company, we are carrying her away with us--which will be lots of fun, for she's as fond of water as a cat and will fancy she is seasick all the time. 

 "Good-bye, dearest! We're just off. I envy you. You happy, happy girl! I am sure you will have such a good time. What a man! As natural as nature! I see, by the insular paper that your islanders adore him. 

 "Hope you found your father better. Another wonderful man! Such an original type, too! Good-bye, my dearest dear_, ALMA. 

 "_P. S. Have missed you so much, darling! Castle Raa wasn't the same place without you--I assure you it wasn't_. "

While I was turning this letter over in my hand, wondering what thebeautiful fiend had meant by it, my maid, who was standing by, wasvisibly burning with a desire to know its contents and give me thebenefit of her own interpretation. 

I told her in general what Alma had said and she burst into littlescreams of indignation. 

"Well, the huzzy! The wicked huzzy! That's all she is, my lady, beggingyour pardon, and there's no other name for her. Arranged a month ago, indeed! It was never thought of until last night after Mr. Conrad'stelegram came. "

"Then what does it mean?"

"I can tell your ladyship what it means, if you'll promise not to flyout at me again. It means that Madame wants to stand in your shoes, andwouldn't mind going through the divorce court to do so. And seeing thatyou can't be tempted to divorce your husband because you are a Catholic, she thinks your husband, who isn't, might be tempted to divorce you. Soshe's setting a trap for you, and she expects you to fall into it whileshe's away, and if you do. . . . "

"Impossible!"

"Oh, trust _me_, your ladyship. I haven't been keeping my ears closedwhile your ladyship has been away, and if that chatterbox of a maid ofhers hadn't been such a fool I suppose she would have been left behindto watch. But there's somebody else in the house who thinks she has agrievance against you, and if listening at keyholes will doanything . . . Hush!"

Price stopped suddenly with her finger to her lip, and then going ontiptoe to the door she opened it with a jerk, when the littlehousekeeper was to be seen rising to an upright position whilepretending that she had slipped. 

"I only came to ask if her ladyship had lunched?" she said. 

I answered that I had not, and then told her (so as to give her nofurther excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take herorders from Price--an announcement which caused my maid to stand severalinches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairswith her beak in the air like an injured cockatoo. 

All the afternoon I was in a state of the utmost agitation, sometimeswondering what Martin would think of the bad manners of my husband, whoafter inviting him had gone away just as he was about to arrive;sometimes asking myself, with a quiver of shame, if he would imaginethat this was a scheme of my own contriving; but oftenest remembering myresolution of renunciation and thinking of the much fiercer fight thatwas before me now that I had to receive and part with him alone. 

More than once I had half a mind to telegraph to Martin putting him off, and though I told myself that to do so would not be renunciation butmerely flight from temptation, I always knew at the bottom of my heartthat I really wanted him to come. 

Nevertheless I vowed to my very soul that I should be strong--strong inevery word and look--and if Alma was daring me I should defy her, andshe would see that I should neither yield nor run away. 

Thus I entrenched myself at last in a sort of bright strong faith in mypower to resist temptation. But I must leave it to those who know betterthan I the way to read a woman's heart to say how it came to pass thattowards five o'clock, when I heard the sound of wheels and going on tomy balcony saw a jaunting-car at the front entrance, and thenopening my door heard Martin's great voice in the hall, I flewdownstairs--literally flew--in my eagerness to welcome him. 

There he was in his brown Harris tweeds and soft slouch hat with such anatmosphere of health and sweep of winds about him as almost took away mybreath. 

"Helloa!" he cried, and I am sure his eyes brightened at the sight of mefor they were like the sea when the sun shines on it. 

"You're better, aren't you?" he said. "No need to ask that, though--thecolour in your face is wonderful. "

In spite of my resolution, and the attempt I made to show him only akind of glad seriousness, I could not help it if I blushed. Also I couldnot help it if, while going upstairs and telling him what had happenedto the house-party, I said he was doomed to the disappointment of havingnobody except myself for company, and then, woman-like, waited eagerlyfor what he would say. 

"So they're all gone except yourself, are they?" he said. 

"I'm afraid they are, " I answered. 

"Well, if it had been the other way about, and you had gone and they hadstayed, by the stars of God, I _should_ have been disappointed. Butthings being as they are, we'll muddle through, shan't we?"

Not all the vows in the world could prevent me from finding that answerdelightful, and when, on entering my boudoir, he said:

"Sorry to miss Madame though. I wanted a word with that lady before Iwent down to the Antarctic, " I could not resist the mischievous impulseto show him Alma's letter. 

While he read it his bright face darkened (for all the world like ajeweller's window when the shutter comes down on it), and when he hadfinished it he said once more:

"I hate that woman! She's like a snake. I'd like to put my foot on it. "

And then--

"She may run away as much as she likes, but I _will_ yet, you go bail, Iwill. "

He was covered with dust and wanted to wash, so I rang for a maid, whotold me that Mr. And Mrs. Eastcliff's rooms had been prepared for Mr. Conrad. This announcement (though I tried to seem unmoved) overwhelmedme with confusion, seeing that the rooms in question almost communicatedwith my own. But Martin only laughed and said:

"Stunning! We'll live in this wing of the house and leave the rest ofthe old barracks to the cats, should we?"

I was tingling with joy, but all the same I knew that a grim battle wasbefore me. 

SIXTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

By the time he returned from his room I had tea served in my boudoir, and while we sat facing the open door to the balcony he told me abouthis visit to his old school; how at the dinner on the previous nightthe Principal had proposed his health, and after the lads had sung"Forty Years On" he had told them yarns about his late expedition untilthey made the long hiss of indrawn breath which is peculiar to boys whenthey are excited; how they had followed him to his bedroom as if he hadbeen the Pied Piper of Hamelin and questioned him and clambered over himuntil driven off by the house-master; and how, finally, before he wasout of bed this morning the smallest scholar in the junior house, a tinylittle cherub with the face of his mother, had come knocking at his doorto ask if he wanted a cabin boy. 

Martin laughed as if he had been a boy himself (which he always was andalways will be) while telling me these stories, and I laughed too, though with a certain tremor, for I was constantly remembering myresolution and feeling afraid to be too happy. 

After tea we went out on to the balcony, and leaned side byside over the crumbling stone balustrade to look at the lovelylandscape--loveliest when the sun is setting on it--with theflower-garden below and the headland beyond, covered with heather andgorse and with a winding white path lying over it like the lash of awhip until it dipped down to the sea. 

"It's a beautiful old world, though, isn't it?" said Martin. 

"Isn't it?" I answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and smiled. 

Then we heard the light _shsh_ of a garden hose, and looking down saw anold man watering the geraniums. 

"Sakes alive! It's Tommy the Mate, " cried Martin, and leaving me on thebalcony he went leaping down the stone stairway to greet his oldcomrade. 

"God bless me!" said Tommy. "Let me have a right look at ye. Yes, yes, it's himself, for sure. "

A little gale of tender memories floated up to me from my childhood atseeing those two together again, with Martin now standing head andshoulders above the old man's Glengarry cap. 

"You've been over the highways of the sea, farther than Franklinhimself, they're telling me, " said Tommy, and when Martin, laughingmerrily, admitted that he had been farther south at all events, the oldsailor said:

"Well, well! Think of that now! But wasn't I always telling theomadhauns what you'd be doing some day?"

Then with a "glime" of his "starboard eye" in my direction he said:

"You haven't got a woman yet though? . . . No, I thought not. You'relike myself, boy--there's not many of them sorts _in_ for you. "

After that, and a more undisguised look my way, the old man talked aboutme, still calling me the "lil misthress" and saying they were putting apower of gold on my fingers, but he would be burning candles to themiracles of God to see the colour of it in my cheeks too. 

"She's a plant that doesn't take kindly to a hot-house same as this, "(indicating the house) "and she'll not be thriving until somebody'sbedding her out, I'm thinking. "

It was Saturday, and after dinner Martin proposed that we should walk tothe head of the cliff to see Blackwater by night, which was a wonderfulspectacle, people said, at the height of the season, so I put a silkwrap over my head and we set out together. 

There was no moon and few stars were visible, but it was one of thoseluminous nights in summer which never forget the day. Therefore wewalked without difficulty along the white winding path with its nuttyodour of the heather and gorse until we came near the edge of the cliff, and then suddenly the town burst upon our view, with its promenades, theatres, and dancing palaces ablaze with electric light, which wasreflected with almost equal brilliance in the smooth water of the bay. 

We were five miles from Blackwater, but listening hard we thought wecould hear, through the boom of the sea on the dark cliffs below us, thethin sounds of the bands that were playing in the open-air pavilions, and looking steadfastly we thought we could see, in the black patchesunder the white light, the movement of the thousands of persons who werepromenading along "the front. "

This led Martin to talk of my father, saying as we walked back, with thedark outlines of the sleeping mountains confronting us, what amarvellous man he had been to transform in twenty years the littlefishing and trading port into a great resort for hundreds of thousandsof pleasure-seekers. 

"But is he any better or happier for the wealth it has brought him, andfor the connections he has bought with it? Is anybody any better?" saidMartin. 

"I know one who isn't, " I answered. 

I had not meant to say that. It had slipped out unawares, and in myconfusion at the self-revelation which it seemed to make, I tripped inthe darkness and would have fallen if Martin had not caught me up. 

In doing this he had to put his arms about me and to hold me until I wassteady on my feet, and having done so he took my hand and drew itthrough his arm and in this way we walked the rest of the way back. 

It would be impossible and perhaps foolish to say what that incidentmeant to me. I felt a thrill of joy, a quivering flood of delight which, with all the raptures of my spiritual love, had never come to me before. 

Every woman who loves her husband must know what it is, but to me it wasa great revelation. It was just as if some new passion had sprung intolife in me at a single moment. And it had--the mighty passion that liesat the root of our being, the overwhelming instinct of sex which, takingno account of religion and resolutions, sweeps everything before it likea flood. 

I think Martin must have felt it too, for all at once he ceased tospeak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of tendernessthat I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we walked on butthe crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and the measured boom ofthe sea which we were leaving behind us--nothing but that and the quickbeating in my own breast. 

When we came to the garden the frowning face of the old house was infront of us, and it was all in darkness, save for the light in my roomwhich came out on to the balcony. Everything was quiet. The air wasbreathless. There was not a rustle in the trees. 

We took two or three turns on the lawn in front of my windows, sayingnothing but feeling terribly, fearfully happy. After a few moments (orthey seemed few) a cuckoo clock on my desk struck eleven, and we went upthe stone stairway into my boudoir and parted for the night. 

Even then we did not speak, but Martin took my hand and lifted myfingers to his lips, and the quivering delight I had been feeling eversince I slipped on the headland rushed through me again. 

At the next moment I was in my room. I did not turn on the light. Iundressed in the darkness and when my maid came I was in bed. Shewanted to tell me about a scene with the housekeeper in the kitchen, butI said:

"I don't want to talk to-night, Price. "

I did not know what was happening to me. I only knew, for the first timethat night, that above everything else I was a woman, and that myrenunciation, if it was ever to come to pass, would be a still moretragic thing than I had expected. 

My grim battle had begun. 

SIXTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

When I awoke in the morning I took myself severely to task. Was this howI was fulfilling the promise I had made to Martin's mother, or preparingto carry out the counsel of Father Dan?

"I must be more careful, " I told myself. "I must keep a stronger hold ofmyself. "

The church bells began to ring, and I determined to go to mass. I wantedto go alone and much as I grudged every minute of Martin's company whichI lost, I was almost glad when, on going into the boudoir with my missalin my hand, I found him at a table covered with papers and heard himsay:

"Helloa! See these letters and telegrams? Sunday as it is I've got toanswer them. "

Our church was a little chapel-of-ease on the edge of my husband'sestate, opened, after centuries of neglect, by the bad Lord Raa, in hisregenerate days, for the benefit of the people of his own village. Itwas very sweet to see their homely faces as they reverently bowed androse, and even to hear their creachy voices when they joined in thesinging of the Gloria. 

Following the gospel there was a sermon on the words "Lead us not intotemptation but deliver us from evil. " The preacher was a young curate, the brother of my husband's coachman; and it occurred to me that hecould know very little of temptation for himself, but the instruction hegave us was according to the doctrine of our Church, as I had receivedit from the Reverend Mother and the Cardinals who used to hold retreatsat the convent. 

"Beware of the temptations of the flesh, my children, " said the priest. "The Evil One is very subtle, and not only in our moments of pride andprosperity, but also in our hours of sorrow and affliction, he is forever waiting and watching to betray us to our downfall and damnation. "

In the rustling that followed the sermon a poor woman who sat next tome, with a print handkerchief over her head, whispered in my ear thatshe was sorry she had not brought her husband, for he had given way todrink, poor fellow, since the island had had such good times and wageshad been so high. 

But the message came closer home to me. Remembering the emotions of thenight before, I prayed fervently to be strengthened against alltemptation and preserved from all sin. And when the mass was resumed Irecalled some of the good words with which I had been taught to assistat the Holy Sacrifice--praying at the _Credo_ that as I had become achild in the bosom of the Church I might live and die in it. 

When the service was over I felt more at ease and I emptied my purse, Iremember, partly into the plate and partly to the poor people at thechurch door. 

It was in this spirit that I returned home in the broad sunshine ofnoonday. But half way up the drive I met Martin walking briskly down tomeet me. He was bareheaded and in flannels; and I could not help it ifhe looked to me so good, so strong, and so well able to protect a womanagainst every danger, that the instructions I had received in church, and the resolutions I had formed there, seemed to run out of my heart asrapidly as the dry sand of the sea-shore runs through one's fingers. 

"Helloa!" he cried, as usual. "The way I've been wasting this wonderfulmorning over letters and telegrams! But not another minute will I giveto anything under the stars of God but you. "

If there was any woman in the world who could have resisted thatgreeting I was not she, and though I was a little confused I was veryhappy. 

As we walked back to the house we talked of my father and his suddenillness, then of his mother and my glimpse of her, and finally ofindifferent things, such as the weather, which had been a long droughtand might end in a deluge. 

By a sort of mutual consent we never once spoke of the central subjectof our thoughts--my marriage and its fatal consequences--but I noticedthat Martin's voice was soft and caressing, that he was walking close tomy side, and that as often as I looked up at him he was looking down atme and smiling. 

It was the same after luncheon when we went out into the garden and saton a seat in the shrubbery almost immediately facing my windows, and hespread a chart on a rustic table and pointing to a red line on it said:

"Look, this is the course of our new cruise, please God. "

He talked for a long time, about his captain and crew; the scientificexperts who had volunteered to accompany him, his aeronautic outfit, hissledges and his skis; but whatever he talked about--if it was only hisdogs and the food he had found for them--it was always in that soft, caressing voice which made me feel as if (though he never said one wordof love) he were making love to me, and saying the sweetest things a mancould say to a woman. 

After a time I found myself answering in the same tones, and even whenspeaking on the most matter-of-fact subjects I felt as if I were sayingthe sweetest things a woman could say to a man. 

We sat a long time so, and every moment we were together seemed to makeour relation more perilous, until at length the sweet seductive twilightof the shortening autumn day began to frighten me, and making excuse ofa headache I said I must go indoors. 

He walked with me up the stone-stairway and into my boudoir, until wegot to the very door of my room, and then suddenly he took up both myhands and kissed them passionately. 

I felt the colour rushing to my cheeks and I had an almost irresistibleimpulse to do something in return. But conquering it with a greateffort, I turned quickly into my bedroom, shut the door, pulled down theblinds and then sat and covered my face and asked myself, with manybitter pangs, if it could possibly be true (as I had been taught tobelieve) that our nature was evil and our senses were always tempting usto our destruction. 

Several hours passed while I sat in the darkness with this warfare goingon between my love and my religion, and then Price came to dress me fordinner, and she was full of cheerful gossip. 

"Men are _such_ children, " she said; "they can't help giving themselvesaway, can they?"

It turned out that after I had left the lawn she had had someconversation with Martin, and I could see that she was eager to tell mewhat he had said about myself. 

"The talk began about your health and altered looks, my lady. 'Don'tyou think your mistress is looking ill?' said he. 'A little, ' I said. 'But her body is not so ill as her heart, if you ask me, ' said I. "

"You never said that, Price?"

"Well, I could not help saying it if I thought so, could I?"

"And what did he say?"

"He didn't say anything then, my lady, but when I said, 'You see, sir, my lady is tied to a husband she doesn't love, ' he said, 'How can she, poor thing? 'Worse than that, ' I said, 'her husband loves anotherwoman. ' 'The fool! Where does he keep his eyes?' said he. 'Worse still, 'said I, 'he flaunts his infidelities in her very face. ' 'The brute!' hesaid, and his face looked so fierce that you would have thought hewanted to take his lordship by the throat and choke him. 'Why doesn'tshe leave the man?' said he. 'That's what I say, sir, but I think it'sher religion, ' I said. 'Then God help her, for there's no remedy forthat, ' said he. And then seeing him so down I said, 'But we women arealways ruled by our hearts in the long run. ' 'Do you think so?' said he. 'I'm sure of it, ' said I, 'only we must have somebody to help us, ' Isaid. 'There's her father, ' said he. 'A father is of no use in a caselike this, ' I said, 'especially such a one as my lady's is, according toall reports. No, ' said I, 'it must be somebody else--somebody who caresenough for a woman to risk everything for her, and just take her andmake her do what's best for herself whether she likes it or not. Now ifsomebody like that were to come to my lady, and get her out of hertrouble, ' I said. . . . 'Somebody will, ' said he. 'Make your mind easyabout that. Somebody will, ' he said, and then he went on walking to andfro. "

Price told this story as if she thought she was bringing me the gladdestof glad tidings; but the idea that Martin had come back into my life tomaster me, to take possession of me, to claim me as his own (just as hedid when I was a child) and thereby compel me to do what I had promisedhis mother and Father Dan not to do--this was terrifying. 

But there was a secret joy in it too, and every woman will know what Imean if I say that my heart was beating high with the fierce delight ofbelonging to somebody when I returned to the boudoir where Martin waswaiting to sit down to dinner. 

Then came a great surprise. 

Martin was standing with his back to the fire-place, and I saw in amoment that the few hours which had intervened had changed him as muchas they had changed me. 

"Helloa! Better, aren't we?" he cried, but he was now cold, almostdistant, and even his hearty voice seemed to have sunk to a kind ofnervous treble. 

I could not at first understand this, but after a while I began to seethat we two had reached the point beyond which it was impossible to gowithout encountering the most tremendous fact of our lives--my marriageand all that was involved by it. 

During dinner we spoke very little. He seemed intentionally not to lookat me. The warm glances of his sea-blue eyes, which all the afternoonhad been making the colour mount to my cheeks, had gone, and it sent acold chill to my heart to look across the table at his clouded face. Butsometimes when he thought my own face was down I was conscious that hiseyes were fixed on me with a questioning, almost an imploring gaze. Hisnervousness communicated itself to me. It was almost as if we had begunto be afraid of each other and were hovering on the brink of fatalrevelations. 

When dinner was over, the table cleared and the servants gone, I couldbear the strain no longer, so making excuse of a letter I had to writeto the Reverend Mother I sat down at my desk, whereupon Martin lit acigar and said he would stroll over the headland. 

I heard his footsteps going down the stone stairway from the balcony; Iheard their soft thud on the grass of the lawn; I heard their sharpercrackle on the gravel of the white path, and then they mingled with thesurge and wash of the flowing tide and died away in the distance. 

I rose from the desk, and going over to the balcony door looked out intothe darkness. It was a beautiful, pathetic, heart-breaking night. Nomoon, but a perfect canopy of stars in a deep blue sky. The fragrance ofunseen flowers--sweetbriar and rose as well as ripening fruit--came upfrom the garden. There was no wind either, not even the rustle of aleaf, and the last bird of evening was silent. All the great orchestraof nature was still, save for the light churning of the water running inthe glen and the deep organ song of the everlasting sea. 

"What can I do?" I asked myself. 

Now that Martin was gone I had begun to understand him. His silence hadbetrayed his heart to me even more than his speech could have done. Towering above him like a frowning mountain was the fact that I was amarried woman and he was trying to stand erect in his honour as a man. 

"He must be suffering too, " I told myself. 

That was a new thought to me and it cut me to the quick. 

When it came to me first I wanted to run after him and throw myself intohis arms, and then I wanted to run away from him altogether. 

I felt as if I were on the brink of two madnesses--the madness ofbreaking my marriage vows and the madness of breaking the heart of theman who loved me. 

"Oh, what can I do?" I asked myself again. 

I wanted him to go; I wanted him to stay; I did not know what I wanted. At length I remembered that in ordinary course he would be going in twodays more, and I said to myself:

"Surely I can hold out that long. "

But when I put this thought to my breast, thinking it would comfort me, I found that it burnt like hot iron. 

Only two days, and then he would be gone, lost to me perhaps for ever. Did my renunciation require that? It was terrible!

There was a piano in the room, and to strengthen and console myself inmy trouble I sat down to it and played and sang. I sang "Ave MariaStella. "

I was singing to myself, so I know I began softly--so softly that myvoice must have been a whisper scarcely audible outside the room--

 "_Hail thou star of ocean, Portal of the sky_. "

But my heart was full and when I came to the verses which always movedme most--

 "_Virgin of all virgins, To thy shelter take us_"--

my voice, without my knowing it, may have swelled out into thebreathless night until it reached Martin, where he walked on the darkheadland, and sounded to him like a cry that called him back. 

I cannot say. I only know that when with a thickening throat I had cometo an end, and my forehead had fallen on to the key-board, and there wasno other sound in the air but the far-off surging of the sea. I heardsomebody calling me in a soft and tremulous whisper, "Mary!"

It was he. I went out to the balcony and there he was on the lawn below. The light of the room was on him and never before had I seen his strongface so full of agitation. 

"Come down, " he said. "I have something to say to you. "

I could not resist him. He was my master. I had to obey. 

When I reached the bottom of the stairway he took my hand, and I did notknow whether it was his hand or mine that was trembling. He led meacross the lawn to the seat in the shrubbery that almost faced mywindows. In the soft and soundless night I could hear his footsteps onthe turf and the rustle of my dress over the grass. 

We sat, and for a moment he did not speak. Then with a passionate rushof words he said:

"Mary, I hadn't meant to say what I'm going to say now, but I can't doanything else. You are in trouble, and I can't stand by and see you soill-used. I can't and I won't!"

I tried to answer him, but my throat was fluttering and I could notspeak. 

"It's only a few days before I ought to sail, but they may be enough inwhich to do something, and if they're not I'll postpone the expeditionor put it off, or send somebody in my place, for go away I cannot andleave you like this. "

I tried to say that he should not do that whatever happened to me, butstill I could not speak. 

"Mary. I want to help you. But I can only do so if you give me the_right_ to do it. Nobody must tell me I'm a meddler, butting in where Ihave no business. There are people enough about you who would be onlytoo ready to do that--people related to you by blood and by law. "

I knew what he was coming to, for his voice was quivering in my earslike the string of a bow. 

"There is only one sort of right, Mary, that is above the right ofblood, and you know what that is. "

My eyes were growing so dim that I could hardly see the face which wasso close to mine. 

"Mary, " he said, "I have always cared for you. Surely you know that. Bythe saints of God I swear there has never been any other girl for me, and now there never will he. Perhaps I ought to have told you thisbefore, and I wanted to do so when I met you in Rome. But it didn'tseem fair, and I couldn't bring myself to do it. "

His passionate voice was breaking; I thought my heart was breaking also. 

"All I could do I did, but it came to nothing; and now you are here andyou are unhappy, and though it is so late I want to help you, to rescueyou, to drag you out of this horrible situation before I go away. Let medo it. Give me the right of one you care enough for to allow him tospeak on your behalf. "

I knew what that meant. I knew that I was tottering on the very edge ofa precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father Dan, ofMartin's mother, of my own mother, and since I could not speak Istruggled to pray. 

"Don't say you can't. If you do I shall go away a sorrowful man. I shallgo at once too--to-night or to-morrow morning at latest, for my heartbleeds to look at you and I can't stay here any longer to see yousuffer. It is not torture to me--it's hell!"

And then the irrepressible, overwhelming, inevitable moment came. Martinlaid hold of my right hand and said in his tremulous voice:

"Mary . . . Mary . . . I . . . I love you!"

I could hear no more. I could not think or pray or resist any longer. The bitter struggle was at an end. Before I knew what I was doing I wasdropping my head on to his breast and he with a cry of joy was gatheringme in his arms. 

I was his. He had taken his own. Nothing counted in the presence of ourlove. To be only we two together--that was everything. The world and theworld's laws, the Church and the Canons of the Church were blotted out, forgotten, lost. 

For some moments I hardly breathed. I was only conscious that over myhead Martin was saying something that seemed to come to me with all thedeep and wonderful whispers of his heart. 

"Then it's true! It's true that you love me! Yes, it's true! It's true!No one shall hurt you again. Never again! No, by the Lord God!"

And then suddenly--as suddenly as the moment of intoxication had come tome--I awoke from my delirium. Some little thing awakened me. I hardlyknow what it was. Perhaps it was only the striking of the cuckoo clockin my room. 

"What are we doing?" I said. 

Everything had rolled back on me--my marriage, Father Dan's warning, mypromise to Martin's mother. 

"Where are we?" I said. 

"Hush! Don't speak, " said Martin. "Let us think of nothingto-night--nothing except our love. "

"Don't say that, " I answered. "We are not free to love each other, " andthen, trying to liberate myself from his encircling arms I cried:

"God help me! God forgive me!"

"Wait!" said Martin, holding me a moment longer. "I know what you feel, and I'm not the man to want a girl to wrong her conscience. But there'sone question I must ask you. If you _were_ free, could you love methen?"

"Don't ask me that. I must not answer it. "

"You must and shall, " said Martin. "Could you?"

"Yes. "

"That's enough for me--enough for to-night anyway. Have no fear. Allshall be well. Go to your room now. "

He raised me to my feet and led me back to the foot of the balcony, andthere he kissed my hand and let me go. 

"Good night!" he said softly. 

"Good night!" I answered. 

"God bless you, my pure sweet girl!"

At the next moment I was in my room, lying face down on my bed--seeingno hope on any side, and sobbing my heart out for what might have beenbut for the hard law of my religion and the cruel tangle of my fate. 

SIXTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

Next morning, Monday morning, while I was breakfasting in my bedroom, Price came with a message from Martin to say that he was going into theglen and wished to know if I would go with him. 

I knew perfectly what that meant. He wished to tell me what steps heintended to take towards my divorce, and my heart trembled with thethought of the answer I had to give him--that divorce for me, under anycircumstances, was quite impossible. 

Sorry as I was for myself I was still more sorry for Martin. I feltlike a judge who had to pronounce sentence upon him--dooming his dearesthopes to painful and instant death. 

I could hear him on the lawn with Tommy the Mate, laughing like a boylet loose from school, and when I went down to him he greeted me with acry of joy that was almost heart-breaking. 

Our way to the glen was through a field of grass, where the dew wasthick, and, my boots being thin, Martin in his high spirits wished tocarry me across, and it was only with an effort that I prevented himfrom doing so. 

The glen itself when we reached it (it was called Glen Raa) was almostcruelly beautiful that day, and remembering what I had to do in it Ithought I should never be able to get it out of my sight--with itsslumberous gloom like that of a vast cathedral, its thick arch ofoverhanging boughs through which the morning sunlight was streamingslantwards like the light through the windows of a clerestory, itsrunning water below, its rustling leaves above, and the chirping of itsbirds on every side, making a sound that was like the chanting of achoir in some far-off apse and the rumbling of their voices in the roof. 

Two or three times, as we walked down the glen towards a port (Port Raa)which lay at the seaward end of it. Martin rallied me on the settledgravity of my face and then I had to smile, though how I did so I do notknow, for every other minute my heart was in my mouth, and never more sothan when, to make me laugh, he rattled away in the language of hisboyhood, saying:

"Isn't this stunning? Splendiferous, eh?"

When we came out at the mouth of the port, where a line of littlestunted oaks leaned landward as with the memory of many a winter'sstorm, Martin said:

"Let us sit down here. "

We sat on the sloping bank, with the insects ticking in the grass, thebees humming in the air, the sea fowl screaming in the sky, the broadsea in front, and the little bay below, where the tide, which was goingout, had left behind it a sharp reef of black rocks covered withsea-weed. 

A pleasure-steamer passed at that moment with its flags flying, itsawnings spread, its decks crowded with excursionists, and a brass handplaying one of Sousa's marches, and as soon as it had gone, Martin said:

"I've been thinking about our affair, Mary, how to go to work and allthat, and of course the first thing we've got to do is to get adivorce. "

I made no answer, and I tried not to look at him by fixing my eyes uponthe sea. 

"You have evidence enough, you know, and if you haven't there'sPrice--she has plenty. So, since you've given me the right to speak foryou, dear, I'm going to speak to your father first"

I must have made some half-articulate response, for not understanding mehe said:

"Oh, I know he'll be a hard nut to crack. He won't want to hear whatI've got to say, but he has got to hear it. And after all you're hisdaughter, and if he has any bowels of compassion . . . "

Again I must have made some effort to speak, for he said:

"Yes, he's ill, but he has only to set Curphy to work and the lawyerwill do the rest. "

I could not allow him to go any further, so I blurted out somehow that Ihad seen my father already. 

"On this subject?"

"Yes. "

"And what did he say?"

I told him as well as I could what my father had said, being ashamed torepeat it. 

"That was only bluff, though, " said Martin. "The real truth is that youwould cease to be Lady Raa and that would be a blow to his pride. Thenthere would no longer be any possibility of establishing a family andthat would disturb his plans. No matter! We can set Curphy to workourselves. "

"But I have seen Mr. Curphy also, " I said. 

"And what did _he_ say?"

I told him what the lawyer had said and he was aghast. 

"Good heavens! What an iniquity! In England too! But never mind! Thereare other countries where this relic of the barbaric ages doesn't exist. We'll go there. We must get you a divorce somehow. "

My time had come. I could keep back the truth no longer. 

"But Martin, " I said, "divorce is impossible for me--quite impossible. "

And then I told him that I had been to see the Bishop also, and he hadsaid what I had known before, though in the pain of my temptation I hadforgotten it, that the Catholic Church did not countenance divorceunder any circumstances, because God made marriages and therefore no mancould dissolve them. 

Martin listened intently, and in his eagerness to catch every word heraised himself to a kneeling position by my side, so that he was lookinginto my face. 

"But Mary, my dear Mary, " he said, "you don't mean to say you will allowsuch considerations to influence you?"

"I am a Catholic--what else can I do?" I said. 

"But think--my dear, dear girl, think how unreasonable, how untrue, howpreposterous it all is in a case like yours? God made your marriage?Yours? God married you to that notorious profligate? Can you believeit?"

His eyes were flaming. I dared not look at them. 

"Then think again. They say there's no divorce in the Catholic Church, do they? But what are they talking about? Morally speaking you are adivorced woman already. Anybody with an ounce of brains can see that. When you were married to this man he made a contract with you, and hehas broken the terms of it, hasn't he? Then where's the contract now? Itdoesn't any longer exist. Your husband has destroyed it. "

"But isn't marriage different?" I asked. 

And then I tried to tell him what the Bishop had said of the contract ofmarriage being unlike any other contract because God Himself had becomea party to it. 

"What?" he cried. "God become a party to a marriage like yours? My deargirl, only think! Think of what your marriage has been--the pride andvanity and self-seeking that conceived it, the compulsion that was putupon you to carry it through, and then the shame and the suffering andthe wickedness and the sin of it! Was God a party to the making of amarriage like that?"

In his agitation he rose, walked two or three paces in front and cameback to me. 

"Then think what it means if your marriage may not be dissolved. Itmeans that you must go on living with this man whose life is sodegrading. Year in, year out, as long as your life lasts you must lethim humiliate and corrupt you with his company, his companions and hisexample, until you are dragged down, down, down to the filth he lives inhimself, and your very soul is contaminated. Is that what the Churchasks of you?"

I answered no, and tried to tell him what the Bishop had told me aboutseparation, but he interrupted me with a shout. 

"Separation? Did he say that? If the Church has no right to divorce youwhat right has it to separate you? Oh, I see what it will say--hope ofreconciliation. But if you were separated from your husband would youever go back to him? Never in this world. Then what would yourseparation be? Only divorce under another name. "

I was utterly shaken. Perhaps I wanted to believe what Martin wassaying; perhaps I did not know enough to answer him, but I could nothelp it if I thought Martin's clear mind was making dust and ashes ofeverything that Father Dan and the Bishop had said to me. 

"Then what can I do?" I asked. 

I thought his face quivered at that question. He got up again, and stoodbefore me for a moment without speaking. Then he said, with an obviouseffort--

"If your Church will not allow you to divorce your husband, and if youand I cannot marry without that, then . . . "

"Yes?"

"I didn't mean to propose it . . . God knows I didn't, but when a woman. . . When a woman has been forced into a loveless marriage, and it iscrushing the very soul out of her, and the iron law of her Church willnot permit her to escape from it, what crime does she commit ifshe . . . "

"Well?" I asked, though I saw what he was going to say. 

"Mary, " he said, breathing, hard and fast, "you must come to me. "

I made a sudden cry, though I tried not to. 

"Oh, I know, " he said. "It's not what we could wish. But we'll be openabout it. We'll face it out. Why shouldn't we? I shall anyway. And ifyour father and the Bishop say anything to me I'll tell them what Ithink of the abominable marriage they forced you into. As for you, dear, I know you'll have to bear something. All the conventional cantinghypocrisies! Every man who has bought his wife, and every woman who hassold herself into concubinage--there are thousands and thousands of themall the world over, and they'll try . . . Perhaps they'll try . . . Butlet them try. If they want to trample the life out of you they'll haveto walk over me first--yes, by God they will!"

"But Martin . . . "

"Well?"

"Do you mean that I . . . I am . . . To . . . To live with you withoutmarriage?"

"It's the only thing possible, isn't it?" he said. And then he tried toshow me that love was everything, and if people loved each other nothingelse mattered--religious ceremonies were nothing, the morality ofsociety was nothing, the world and its back-biting was nothing. 

The great moment had come for me at last, and though I felt torn betweenlove and pity I had to face it. 

"Martin, I . . . I can't do it, " I said. 

He looked steadfastly into my face for a moment, but I dare not lookback, for I knew he was suffering. 

"You think it would be wrong?"

"Yes. "

"A sin?"

I tried to say "Yes" again, but my reply died in my throat. 

There was another moment of silence and then, in a faltering voice thatnearly broke me down, he said:

"In that case there is nothing more to say. . . . There isn't, isthere?"

I made an effort to speak, but my voice would not come. 

"I thought . . . As there was no other way of escape from this terriblemarriage . . . But if you think . . . "

He stopped, and then coming closer he said:

"I suppose you know what this means for you, Mary--that after all thedegradation you have gone through you are shutting the door to aworthier, purer life, and that . . . "

I could bear no more. My heart was yearning for him, yet I was compelledto speak. 

"But would it be a purer life, Martin, if it began in sin? No, no, itwouldn't, it couldn't. Oh, you can't think how hard it is to deny myselfthe happiness you offer me. It's harder than all the miseries my husbandhas inflicted upon me. But it wouldn't be happiness, because our sinwould stand between us. That would always be there, Martin--every day, every night, as long as ever we lived. . . . We should never know onereally happy hour. I'm sure we should not. I should be unhappy myselfand I should make you unhappy. Oh, I daren't! I daren't! Don't ask me, Ibeg--I beseech you. "

I burst into tears after this, and there was a long silence between us. Then Martin touched my arm and said with a gentleness that nearly brokemy heart:

"Don't cry, Mary. I give in. I find I have no will but yours, dear. If_you_ can bear the present condition of things, I ought to be able to. Let us go back to the house. "

He raised me to my feet and we turned our faces homeward. All thebrightness of the day had gone for both of us by this time. The tide wasnow far out. Its moaning was only a distant murmur. The shore was astretch of jagged black rocks covered with sea-weed. 

SIXTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

Notwithstanding Martin's tenderness I had a vague fear that he had onlypretended to submit to my will, and before the day was over I had proofof it. 

During dinner we spoke very little, and after it was over we went out tothe balcony to sit on a big oak seat which stood there. 

It was another soft and soundless night, without stars, very dark, andwith an empty echoing air, which seemed to say that thunder was not faroff, for the churning of the nightjar vibrated from the glen, and thedistant roar of the tide, now rising, was like the rumble of drums at asoldier's funeral. 

Just as we sat down the pleasure-steamer we had seen in the morningre-crossed our breadth of sea on its way back to Blackwater; and lit upon deck and in all its port-holes, it looked like a floating _caféchantant_ full of happy people, for they were singing in chorus a ruggedsong which Martin and I had known all our lives--

 _Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea, Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be_. 

When the steamer had passed into darkness, Martin said:

"I don't want to hurt you again, Mary, but before I go there's somethingI want to know. . . . If you cannot divorce your husband, and if . . . If you cannot come to me what . . . What is left to us?"

I tried to tell him there was only one thing left to us, and (as muchfor myself as for him) I did my best to picture the spiritual heightsand beauties of renunciation. 

"Does that mean that we are to . . . To part?" he said. "You going yourway and I going mine . . . Never to meet again?"

That cut me to the quick, so I said--it was all I could trust myself tosay--that the utmost that was expected of us was that we should governour affections--control and conquer them. 

"Do you mean that we are to stamp them out altogether?" he said. 

That cut me to the quick too, and I felt like a torn bird that isstruggling in the lime, but I contrived to say that if our love wasguilty love it was our duty to destroy it. 

"Is that possible?" he said. 

"We must ask God to help us, " I answered, and then, while his head wasdown and I was looking out into the darkness, I tried to say that thoughhe was suffering now he would soon get over this disappointment. 

"Do you _wish_ me to get over it?" he asked. 

This confused me terribly, for in spite of all I was saying I knew atthe bottom of my heart that in the sense he intended I did not and couldnot wish it. 

"We have known and cared for each other all our lives, Mary--isn't thatso? It seems as if there never was a time when we didn't know and carefor each other. Are we to pray to God, as you say, that a time may comewhen we shall feel as if we had never known and cared for each other atall?"

My throat was fluttering--I could not answer him. 

"_I_ can't, " he said. "I never shall--never as long as I live. Noprayers will ever help me to forget you. "

I could not speak. I dared not look at him. After a moment he said in athicker voice:

"And you . . . Will you be able to forget _me_? By praying to God willyou be able to wipe me out of your mind?"

I felt as if something were strangling me. 

"A woman lives in her heart, doesn't she?" he said. "Love is everythingto her . . . Everything except her religion. Will it be possible--thisrenunciation . . . Will it be possible for you either?"

I felt as if all the blood in my body were running away from me. 

"It will not. You know it will not. You will never be able to renounceyour love. Neither of us will he able to renounce it. It isn't possible. It isn't human. . . . Well, what then? If we continue to love eachother--you here and I down there--we shall be just as guilty in the eyesof the Church, shan't we?"

I did not answer him, and after a moment he came closer to me on theseat and said almost in a whisper:

"Then think again, Mary. Only give one glance to the horrible life thatis before you when I am gone. You have been married a year . . . Only ayear . . . And you have suffered terribly. But there is worse to come. Your husband's coarse infidelity has been shocking, but there will besomething more shocking than his infidelity--his affection. Have younever thought of _that_?"

I started and shuddered, feeling as if somebody must have told him themost intimate secret of my life. Coming still closer he said:

"Forgive me, dear. I'm bound to speak plainly now. If I didn't I shouldnever forgive myself in the future . . . Listen! Your husband will getover his fancy for this . . . This woman. He'll throw her off, as he hasthrown off women of the same kind before. What will happen then? He'llremember that you belong to him . . . That he has rights in you . . . That you are his wife and he is your husband . . . That the infernal lawwhich denies you the position of an equal human being gives him aright--a legal right--to compel your obedience. Have you never thoughtof _that_?"

For one moment we looked into each other's eyes; then he took hold of myhand and, speaking very rapidly, said:

"That's the life that is before you when I am gone--to live with thisman whom you loathe . . . Year after year, as long as life lasts . . . Occupying the same house, the same room, the same . . . "

I uttered an involuntary cry and he stopped. 

"Martin, " I said, "there is something you don't know. "

And then, I told him--it was forced out of me--my modesty went down inthe fierce battle with a higher pain, and I do not know whether it wasmy pride or my shame or my love that compelled me to tell him, but I_did_ tell him--God knows how--that I could not run the risk he referredto because I was not in that sense my husband's wife and never had been. 

The light was behind me, and my face was in the darkness; but still Icovered it with my hands while I stammered out the story of my marriageday and the day after, and of the compact I had entered into with myhusband that only when and if I came to love him should he claim mysubmission as a wife. 

While I was speaking I knew that Martin's eyes were fixed on me, for Icould feel his breath on the back of my hands, but before I had finishedhe leapt up and cried excitedly:

"And that compact has been kept?"

"Yes. "

"Then it's all right! Don't be afraid. You shall be free. Come in andlet me tell you how! Come in, come in!"

He took me back into the boudoir. I had no power to resist him. His facewas as pale as death, but his eyes were shining. He made me sit down andthen sat on the table in front of me. 

"Listen!" he said. "When I bought my ship from the Lieutenant we signeda deed, a contract, as a witness before all men that he would give mehis ship and I would give him some money. But if after all he hadn'tgiven me his ship what would our deed have been? Only so much wastepaper. "

It was the same with my marriage. If it had been an honest contract, themarriage service would have been a witness before God that we meant tolive together as man and wife. But I never had, therefore what was themarriage service? Only an empty ceremony!

"That's the plain sense of the matter, isn't it?" he cried. "I defy anypriest in the world to prove the contrary. "

"Well?"

"Well, don't you see what it comes to? You are free--morally free at allevents. You can come to me. You must, too. I daren't leave you in thishouse any longer. I shall take you to London and fix you up there, andthen, when I tome back from the Antarctic . . . "

He was glowing with joy, but a cold hand suddenly seized me, for I hadremembered all the terrors of excommunication as Father Dan haddescribed them. 

"But Martin, " I said, "would the Church accept that?"

"What matter whether it would or wouldn't? Our consciences would beclear. There would be no sin, and what you were saying this morningwould not apply. "

"But if I left my husband I couldn't marry you, could I?"

"Perhaps not. "

"Then the Church would say that I was a sinful woman living a sinfullife, wouldn't it?"

"But you wouldn't be. "

"All the same the Church would say so, and if it did I should be cut outof communion, and if I were cut out of communion I should be cast out ofthe Church, and if I were cast out of the Church . . . What would becomeof me then?"

"But, my dear, dear girl, " said Martin, "don't you see that this is notthe same thing at all? It is only a case of a ceremony. And why shoulda mere ceremony--even if we cannot do away with it--darken a woman'slife for ever?"

My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out forsalvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him whatFather Dan had said I was to say. 

"Father Dan is a saint and I love him, " he said. "But what can heknow--what can any priest know of a situation like this? The law of manhas tied you to this brute, but the law of God has given you to me. Whyshould a marriage service stand between us?"

"But it does, " I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare not breakthe law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I cannot give upmy religion. "

After that Martin did not speak for a moment. Then he said:

"You mean that, Mary?"

"Yes. "

And then my heart accused me so terribly of the crime of resisting himthat I took his hand and held his fingers in a tight lock while I toldhim--what I had never meant to tell--how long and how deeply I had lovedhim, but nevertheless I dared not face the thought of living and dyingwithout the consolations of the Church. 

"I dare not! I dare not!" I said. "I should be a broken-hearted woman ifI did, and you don't want that, do you?"

He listened in silence, though the irregular lines in his face showedthe disordered state of his soul, and when I had finished a wild lookcame into his eyes and he said:

"I am disappointed in you, Mary. I thought you were brave and fearless, and that when I showed you a way out of your miserable entanglement youwould take it in spite of everything. "

His voice was growing thick again. I could scarcely bear to listen toit. 

"Do you suppose I wanted to take up the position I proposed to you? NotI. No decent man ever does. But I love you so dearly that I was willingto make that sacrifice and count it as nothing if only I could rescueyou from the misery of your abominable marriage. "

Then he broke into a kind of fierce laughter, and said:

"It seems I wasn't wanted, though. You say in effect that my love issinful and criminal, and that it will imperil your soul. So I'm onlymaking mischief here and the sooner I get away the better foreverybody. "

He threw off my hand, stepped to the door to the balcony, and lookingout into the darkness said, between choking laughter and sobs:

"Ellan, you are no place for me. I can't bear the sight of you anylonger. I used to think you were the dearest spot on earth, because youwere the home of her who would follow me to the ends of the earth if Iwanted her, but I was wrong. She loves me less than a wretched ceremony, and would sacrifice my happiness to a miserable bit of parchment. "

My heart was clamouring loud. Never had I loved him so much as now. Ihad to struggle with myself not to throw myself into his arms. 

"No matter!" he said. "I should be a poor-spirited fool to stay whereI'm not wanted. I must get back to my work. The sooner the better, too. I thought I should be counting the days down there until I could comehome again. But why should I? And why should I care what happens to me?It's all as one now. "

He stepped back from the balcony with a resolute expression on hisgloomy face, and I thought for a moment (half hoping and half fearingit) that he was going to lay hold of me and tell me I must do what hewished because I belonged to him. 

But he only looked at me for a moment in silence, and then burst into aflood of tears, and turned and ran out of the house. 

Let who will say his tears were unmanly. To me they were the bitter cryof a great heart, and I wanted to follow him and say, "Take me. Do whatyou like with me. I am yours. "

I did not do so. I sat a long time where he had left me and then I wentinto my room and locked the door. 

I did not cry. Unjust and cruel as his reproaches had been, I began tohave a strange wild joy in them. I knew that he would not have insultedme like that if he had not loved me to the very verge of madness itself. 

Hours passed. Price came tapping at my door to ask if she should lock upthe house--meaning the balcony. I answered "No, go to bed. "

I heard the deadened thud of Martin's footsteps on the lawn passing toand fro. Sometimes they paused under my window and then I had a feeling, amounting to certainty, that he was listening to hear if I was sobbing, and that if I had been he would have broken down my bedroom door to getto me. 

At length I heard him come up the stone stairway, shut and bolt thebalcony door, and walk heavily across the corridor to his own room. 

The day was then dawning. It was four o'clock. 

SIXTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

I awoke on Wednesday morning in a kind of spiritual and physical fever. Every conflicting emotion which a woman can experience in the cruelbattle between her religion and her love seemed to flood body andsoul--joy, pain, pride, shame, fear, rapture--so that I determined (notwithout cause) to make excuse of a headache to stay in bed. 

Although it was the last day of Martin's visit, and I charged myselfwith the discourtesy of neglecting him, as well as the folly of losingthe few remaining hours of his company, I thought I could not withoutdanger meet him again. 

I was afraid of him, but I was still more afraid of myself. 

Recalling my last sight of his face as he ran out of the house, andknowing well the desire of my own heart, I felt that if I spent anotherday in his company it would be impossible to say what might happen. 

As a result of this riot of emotions I resolved to remain all day in myroom, and towards evening to send out a letter bidding him good-bye andgood-luck. It would be a cold end to a long friendship and my heart wasalmost frozen at the thought of it, but it was all I dared do and I sawno help for it. 

But how little did I know what was written in the Book of Fate for me!

First came Price on pretence of bathing my forehead, and she bombardedme with accounts of Martin's anxiety. When he had heard that I was illhe had turned as white as if sixteen ounces of blood had been taken outof him. It nearly broke me up to hear that, but Price, who was artful, only laughed and said:

"Men _are_ such funny things, bless them! To think of that fine youngman, who is big enough to fell an ox and brave enough to face a lion, being scared to death because a little lady has a headache. "

All morning she was in and out of my room with similar stories, andtowards noon she brought me a bunch of roses wet with the dew, sayingthat Tommy the Mate had sent them. 

"Are you sure it was Tommy the Mate?" I asked, whereupon the sly thing, who was only waiting to tell the truth, though she pretended that I wasforcing it out of her, admitted that the flowers were from Martin, andthat he had told her not to say so. 

"What's he doing now?" I asked. 

"Writing a letter, " said Price, "and judging by the times he has torn itup and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, Ican tell you. "

I thought I knew whom the letter was meant for, and before luncheon itcame up to me. 

It was the first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it meltedme like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such agreat man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written withall its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), andeven its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin--my boywho could never learn his lessons. 

_"Dear Mary, --I am destroyed to here how ill you are, and when I thinkit's all my fault I am ready to kick myself. 

"Don't worry about what I was saying last night. I was mad to think whatmight happen to you while I should be down there, but I've been thinkingit over since and I've come to the conclusion that if their is anythingto God He can be trusted to look after you without any help from me, sowhen we meet again before I go away we'll never say another word on thesubject--that's a promice. 

"I can't go until your better though, so I'm just sending the jauntingcar into town with a telegram to London telling them to postpone theexpedision on account of illness, and if they think it's mine it won'tmatter because it's something worse. 

"But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you might come tothe window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be as happy as asand-boy. 

"Yours, "Mart. "_

To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an immediateverbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and hoped to be up todinner, so he must not send that telegram to London on any account, seeing that nobody knew what was going to happen and everything was inthe hands of God. 

Price took my message with a knowing smile at the corner of her mouth, and a few minutes afterwards I heard Martin laughing with Tommy the Mateat the other end of the lawn. 

I don't know why I took so much pains with my dress that night. I didnot expect to see Martin again. I was sending him away from me. Yetnever before had I dressed myself with so much care. I put on the softwhite satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a string of pearls overmy hair, and another (a tight one) about my neck. 

Martin was waiting for me in the boudoir, and to my surprise he haddressed too, but, except that he wore a soft silk shirt, I did not knowwhat he was wearing, or whether he looked handsome or not, because itwas Martin and that was all that mattered to me. 

I am sure my footstep was light as I entered the room, for I was shod inwhite satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his eyes flutteringas he looked at me, and said something sweet about a silvery fir treewith its little dark head against the sky. 

"It's to be a truce, isn't it?" he asked. 

"Yes, a truce, " I answered, which meant that as this was to be our lastevening together all painful subjects were to be put aside. 

Before we sat down to eat he took me out on to the balcony to look atthe sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet lightning withlow rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for a moment withvisions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by the grim andgreedy darkness. 

During dinner we kept faith with each other. In order to avoid the onesubject that was uppermost in both our minds, we played at beingchildren, and pretended it was the day we sailed to St. Mary's Rock. 

Thinking back to that time, and all the incidents which he had thoughtso heroic and I so tragic, we dropped into the vernacular, and I calledhim "boy" and he called me "bogh millish, " and at every racy word thatcame up from the forgotten cells of our brains we shrieked withlaughter. 

When Martin spoke of his skipper I asked "Is he a stunner?" When hementioned one of his scientific experts I inquired "Is he any good?" Andafter he had told me that he hoped to take possession of some island inthe name of the English crown, and raise the Union Jack on it, I said:"Do or die, we allus does that when we're out asploring. "

How we laughed! He laughed because I laughed, and I laughed because hewas laughing. I had some delicious moments of femininity too (such as nowoman can resist), until it struck me suddenly that in all thismake-believe we were making love to each other again. That frightened mefor a time, but I told myself that everything was safe as long as wecould carry on the game. 

It was not always easy to do so, though, for some of our laughter hadtears behind it, and some of our memories had an unexpected sting, because things had a meaning for us now which they never had before, andwe were compelled to realise what life had done for us. 

Thus I found my throat throbbing when I recalled the loss of our boat, leaving us alone together on that cruel rock with the rising tidethreatening to submerge us, and I nearly choked when I repeated my lastdespairing cry: "I'm not a stunner! . . . And you'll have to give me up. . . And leave me here, and save yourself. "

It was like walking over a solfataro with the thin hot earth ready tobreak up under our feet. 

To escape from it I sat down at the piano and began to sing. I dared notsing the music I loved best--the solemn music of the convent--so I sangsome of the nonsense songs I had heard in the streets. At one moment Itwisted round on the piano stool and said:

"I'll bet you anything"--(I always caught Martin's tone in Martin'scompany), "you can't remember the song I sang sitting in the boat withWilliam Rufus on my lap. "

"I'll bet you anything I can, " said Martin. 

"Oh, no, you can't, " I said. 

"Have it as you like, bogh, but sing it for all, " said Martin, and thenI sang--

 _"Oh, Sally's the gel for me, Our Sally's the gel for me, I'll marry the gel that I love best, When I come back from sea. "_

But that arrow of memory had been sharpened on Time's grindstone and itseemed to pierce through us, so Martin proposed that we should try therollicking chorus which the excursionists had sung on thepleasure-steamer the night before. 

He did not know a note of music and he had no more voice than acorn-crake, but crushing up on to the music-stool by my side, he bangedaway with his left hand while I played with my right, and we sangtogether in a wild delightful discord--

 _"Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea, Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be. "_

We laughed again when that was over, but I knew I could not keep it upmuch longer, and every now and then I forgot that I was in my boudoirand seemed to see that lonesome plateau, twelve thousand feet above theicy barrier that guards the Pole, and Martin toiling through blizzardsover rolling waves of snow. 

Towards midnight we went out on to the balcony to look at the lightningfor the last time. The thunder was shaking the cliffs and rolling alongthem like cannon-balls, and Martin said:

"It sounds like the breaking of the ice down there. "

When we returned to the room he told me he would have to be off early inthe morning, before I was out of bed, having something to do inBlackwater, where "the boys were getting up a spree of some sort. "

In this way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking himselfdown and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came atlast, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for thewhirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and thebeginning of the new. 

My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at him. Oureyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own was hot andtrembling. 

"So this is . . . The end, " he said. 

"Yes . . . The end, " I answered. 

"Well, we've had a jolly evening to finish up with, anyway, " he said. "Ishall always remember it. "

I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about thatwould make him forget this one. 

"Never in this world!" he answered. 

I tried to wish him good luck, and great success, and a happy return tofame and fortune. He looked at me with his great liquid eyes and said:

"Aw, well, that's all as one now. "

I tried to tell him it would always be a joy to me to remember that heand I had been such great, great friends. 

He looked at me again, and answered:

"That's all as one also. "

I reproached myself for the pain I was causing him, and to keep myselfin countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility ofrenunciation--each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful thoughtsand desires. 

"Yes, I'm doing what you wish, " he said. "I can't deny you anything. "

That cut me deep, so I went on to say that if I had acted otherwise Ishould always have had behind me the memory of the vows I had broken, the sacrament I had violated, and the faith I had abandoned. 

"All the same we might have been very happy, " he said, and then mythroat became so thick that I could not say any more. 

After a few moments he said:

"It breaks my heart to leave you. But I suppose I must, though I don'tknow what is going to happen. "

"All that is in God's hands, " I said. 

"Yes, " said Martin, "it's up to Him now. "

It made my heart ache to look at his desolate face, so, struggling hardwith my voice, I tried to tell him he must not despair. 

"You are so young, " I said. "Surely the future holds much happiness foryou. "

And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman taking thelove I was turning away would have made the world a blank for me, Iactually said something about the purest joys of love falling to his lotsome day. 

"No, by the Lord God, " said Martin. "There'll be no other woman for me. If I'm not to have you I'll wear the willow for you the same as if youwere dead. "

There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of secret joyin it too. 

He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long time. Inspite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand go. I felt asif I were a drowning woman and his hand were my only safety. Nevertheless I said:

"We must say good-night and good-bye now. "

"And if it is for ever?"

"Don't say that. "

"But if it is?"

"Well, then . . . For ever. "

"At least give me something to take away with me, " he said. 

"Better not, " I answered, but even as I spoke I dropped the handkerchiefwhich I had been holding in my other hand and he picked it up. 

I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back, weretrickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as ithad been the night before. 

There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing butthe fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my hand to his lips, dropped it gently and walked over to the door. 

But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked at him, longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at which myheart could warm itself. 

Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost allcontrol of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mightysurging river. 

Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, andsnatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped metightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in aquivering, husky voice:

"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you becauseyou are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We loveeach other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where youare, or what they do with you, you are mine and always will be. "

My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was aroaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a woman, and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken possessionof me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. Iwanted to give myself up to it. 

But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the room, clashing the door behind him. 

I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and had goneout with him. 

The room seemed to become dark. 

SIXTY-NINTH CHAPTER

For a moment I stood where Martin had left me, throbbing through andthrough like an open wound, telling myself that he had gone, that Ishould never see him again, and that I had driven him away from me. 

Those passionate kisses had deprived me of the power of consecutivethought. I could only feel. And the one thing I felt above everythingelse was that the remedy I had proposed to myself for my unhappysituation--renunciation--was impossible, because Martin was a part of myown being and without him I could not live. 

"Martin! Martin! My love! My love!" cried the voice of my heart. 

In fear lest I had spoken the words aloud, and in terror of what I mightdo under the power of them, I hurried into my bedroom and locked andbolted the door. 

But the heart knows nothing of locks and bolts, and a moment afterwardsmy spirit was following Martin to his room. I was seeing him as I hadseen him last, with his face full of despair, and I was accusing myselfof the pain I had caused him. 

I had conquered Martin, but I had conquered myself also. I had compelledhim to submit, but his submission had vanquished me. 

Even if I had a right to impose renunciation on myself, what right had Ito impose it upon him, who did not desire it, did not think itnecessary, was not reconciled to it, and only accepted it out ofobedience to my will?

He loved me. No man ever loved a woman more dearly. He deserved to beloved in return. He had done nothing to forfeit love. He was bound by noties. And yet I was driving him away from me. What right had I to do so?

I began to see that I had acted throughout with the most abominableselfishness. In his great love he had said little or nothing abouthimself. But why had _I_ not thought of him? In the struggles of myreligious conscience I had been thinking of myself alone, but Martin hadbeen suffering too, and I had never once really thought of that? What_right_ had I to make him suffer?

After a while I began to prepare for bed, but it took me long toundress, for I stopped every moment to think. 

I thought of the long years Martin had been waiting for me and while Iwas telling myself that he had kept pure for my sake, my heart wasbeating so fast that I could hardly bear the strain of it. 

It cut me still deeper to think that even as there had been no otherwoman for him in the past so there would be no other in the future. Never as long as he lived! I was as sure of that as of the breath Ibreathed, and when I remembered what he had said about wearing thewillow for me as if I were dead I was almost distracted. 

His despairing words kept ringing mercilessly in my ears--"It's all asone now"; "How happy we might have been. " I wanted to go to him and tellhim that though I was sending him away still I loved him, and it was_because_ I loved him that I was sending him away. 

I had made one step towards the door before I remembered that it was toolate to carry out my purpose. The opportunity had passed. Martin hadgone to his room. He might even be in bed by this time. 

But there are spiritual influences which control our bodiesindependently of our will. I put on my dressing-gown (being partlyundressed) and went back to the boudoir. I hardly knew what impulseimpelled me to do so, and neither do I know why I went from the boudoirto the balcony unless it was in hope of the melancholy joy of standingonce more where Martin and I had stood together a little while ago. 

I was alone now. The low thunder was still rolling along the cliffs, butI hardly heard it. The white sheet lightning was still pulsing in thesky and rising, as it seemed, out of the sea, but I hardly saw it. 

At one moment I caught a glimpse of a solitary fishing boat, under itsbrown lugger sails, heading towards Blackwater; at the next moment myeyes were dazzled as by a flashlight from some unseen battleship. 

Leaning over the balcony and gazing into the intermittent darkness Ipictured to myself the barren desolation of Martin's life after he hadleft me. Loving me so much he might fall into some excess, perhaps somevice, and if that happened what would be the measure of myresponsibility?

Losing me he might lose his faith in God. I had read of men becomingspiritual castaways after they had lost their anchorage in some greatlove, and I asked myself what should I do if Martin became an infidel. 

And when I told myself that I could only save Martin's soul bysacrificing my own I was overwhelmed by a love so great that I thought Icould do even that. 

"Martin! Martin! Forgive me, forgive me, " I cried. 

I felt so hot that I opened my dressing-gown to cool my bare breast. After a while I began to shiver and then fearing I might take cold Iwent back to the boudoir, and sat down. 

I looked at my cuckoo clock. It was half-past twelve. Only half an hoursince Martin had left me! It seemed like hours and hours. What of theyears and years of my life that I had still to spend without him?

The room was so terribly silent, yet it seemed to be full of our deadlaughter. The ghost of our happiness seemed to haunt it. I was sure Icould never live in it again. 

I wondered what Martin would be doing now. Would he be in bed andasleep, or sitting up like this, and thinking of me as I was thinking ofhim?

At one moment I thought I heard his footsteps. I listened, but the soundstopped. At another moment, covering my face with my hands, I thought Isaw him in his room, as plainly as if there were no walls dividing us. He was holding out his hands to me, and his face had the yearning, loving, despairing expression which it had worn when he looked back atme from the door. 

At yet another moment I thought I heard him calling me. 

"Mary!"

I listened again, but again all was still, and when I told myself thatif in actual fact he had spoken my name it was perhaps only to himself(as I was speaking his) my heart throbbed up to my throat. 

Once more I heard his voice. 

"Mary!"

I could bear no more. Martin wanted me. I must go to him. Though bodyand soul were torn asunder I must go. 

Before I knew what I was doing I had opened the door and was walkingacross the corridor in the direction of Martin's room. 

The house was dark. Everybody had gone to bed. Light as my footstepswere, the landing was creaking under me. I knew that the floors of thegrim old Castle sometimes made noises when nobody walked on them, butnone the less I felt afraid. 

Half way to Martin's door I stopped. A ghostly hand seemed to be laidon my shoulder and a ghostly voice seemed to say in my ear:

"Wait! Reflect! If you do what you are thinking of doing what willhappen? You will become an outcast. The whole body of your own sex willturn against you. You will be a bad woman. "

I knew what it was. It was my conscience speaking to me in the voice ofmy Church--my Church, the mighty, irresistible power that was separatingme from Martin. I was its child, born in its bosom, but if I broke itslaws it would roll over me like a relentless Juggernaut. 

It was not at first that I could understand why the Church should setitself up against my Womanhood. My Womanhood was crying out for life andlove and liberty. But the Church, in its inexorable, relentless voice, was saying, "Thou Shalt Not!"

After a moment of impenetrable darkness, within and without, I thought Isaw things more plainly. The Church was the soul of the world. It stoodfor purity, which alone could hold the human family together. If allwomen who had made unhappy marriages were to do as I was thinking ofdoing (no matter under what temptation) the world would fall to wreckand ruin. 

Feeling crushed and ashamed, and oh, so little and weak, I groped my wayback to the boudoir and closed the door. 

Then a strange thing happened--one of those little accidents of lifewhich seem to be thrown off by the mighty hand of Fate. A shaft of lightfrom my bedroom, crossing the end of my writing-desk, showed me a copyof a little insular newspaper. 

The paper, which must have come by the evening post, had probably beenopened by Martin, and for that reason only I took it up and glanced atit. 

The first thing that caught my eye was a short report headed "CharityPerformance. "

It ran:

_"The English ladies and gentlemen from Castle Raa who are cruisinground the island in the handsome steam yacht, the_ Cleopatra, _gave avariety entertainment last night in aid of the Catholic Mission at thePalace, Ravenstown. 

"At the end of the performance the Lord Bishop, who was present inperson and watched every item of the programme with obvious enjoyment, proposed a vote of thanks in his usual felicitous terms, thanking LordRaa for this further proof of his great liberality of mind in helping aCatholic charity, and particularly mentioning the beautiful andaccomplished Madame Lier, who had charmed all eyes and won all hearts byher serpentine dances, and to whom the Church in Ellan would always beindebted for the handsome sum which had been the result of herdisinterested efforts in promoting the entertainment. 

"It is understood that the_ Cleopatra _will leave Ravenstown Harbourto-morrow morning on her way back to Port Raa. "_

That was the end of everything. It came upon me like a torrent and sweptall my scruples away. 

Such was the purity of the Church--threatening _me_ with its censuresfor wishing to follow the purest dictates of my heart, yet taking moneyfrom a woman like Alma, who was bribing it to be blind to her misconductand to cover her with its good-will!

My husband too--his infidelities were flagrant and notorious, yet theChurch, through its minister, was flattering his vanity and condoninghis offences!

He was coming back to me, too--this adulterous husband, and when he camethe Church would require that I should keep "true faith" with him, whatever his conduct, and deny myself the pure love that was now awakewithin me. 

But no, no, no! Never again! It would be a living death. Accursed be thepower that could doom a woman to a living death!

Perhaps I was no longer sane--morally sane--and if so God and the Churchwill forgive me. But seeing that neither the Church nor the Law couldliberate me from this bond which I did not make, that both wereshielding the evil man and tolerating the bad woman, my whole soul rosein revolt. 

I told myself now that to leave my husband and go to Martin would be toescape from shame to honour. 

I saw Martin's despairing face again as I had seen it at the moment ofour parting, and my brain rang with his passionate words. "You are mywife. I am your real husband. We love each other. We shall continue tolove each other. No matter where you are, or what they do with you, youare mine and always will be. "

Something was crying out within me: "Love him! Tell him you love him. Now, now! He is going away. To-morrow will be too late. Go to him. Thiswill be your true marriage. The other was only legalised and sanctifiedprostitution. "

I leapt up, and tearing the door open, I walked with strong steps acrossthe corridor towards Martin's room. 

My hair was down, my arms were bare in the ample sleeves of mydressing-gown, and my breast was as open as it had been on the balcony, but I thought nothing of all that. 

I did not knock at Martin's door. I took hold of the handle as one whohad a right. It turned of itself and the door opened. 

My mind was in a whirl, black rings were circling round my eyes, but Iheard my trembling, quivering, throbbing voice, as if it had been thevoice of somebody else, saying:

"Martin, I am coming in. "

Then my heart which had been beating violently seemed to stop. My limbsgave way. I was about to fall. 

At the next moment strong arms were around me. I had no fear. But therewas a roaring in my brain such as the ice makes when it is breaking up. 

 Oh, you good women, who are happy in the love that guards you, shields you, shelters you, wraps you round and keeps you pure and true, tread lightly over the prostrate soul of your sister in her hour of trial and fierce temptation. 

 And you blessed and holy saints who kneel before the Mother of all Mothers, take the transgression of her guilty child to Him who--long ago in the house of the self-righteous Pharisee--said to the woman who was a sinner and yet loved much--the woman who had washed His feet with her tears and dried them with the hair of her head--"Thy sins are forgiven thee. "

FIFTH PART

I BECOME A MOTHER

SEVENTIETH CHAPTER

Next morning, at half-past eight, my Martin left me. 

We were standing together in the boudoir between the table and the fire, which was burning briskly, for the sultry weather had gone in the night, and the autumn air was keen, though the early sun was shining. 

At the last moment he was unwilling to go, and it was as much as I coulddo to persuade him. Perhaps it is one of the mysteries which God alonecan read that our positions seemed to have been reversed since the daybefore. 

He was confused, agitated, and full of self reproaches, while I felt nofear and no remorse, but only an indescribable joy, as if a new andgracious life had suddenly dawned on me. 

"I don't feel that I can leave England now, " he said. 

"You can and you must, " I answered, and then I spoke of his expeditionas a great work which it was impossible to put off. 

"Somebody else must do it, then, " he said. 

"Nobody else can, or shall, " I replied. 

"But our lives are for ever joined together now, and everything elsemust go by the board. "

"Nothing shall go by the board for my sake, Martin. I refuse and forbidit. "

Everything had been arranged, everything settled, great sums of moneyhad been subscribed out of faith in him, and him only, and a largecompany was ready and waiting to sail under his command. He was the Manof Destiny, therefore nothing--nothing whatever--must keep him back. 

"Then if I must go, you must go too, " he said. "I mean you must go withme to London and wait there until I return. "

"That is impossible, " I answered. 

The eyes of the world were on him now, and the heart of the world waswith him. If I did what he desired it would reflect dishonour on hisname, and he should not suffer for my sake under any circumstances. 

"But think what may happen to you while I am away, " he said. 

"Nothing will happen while you are away, Martin. "

"But how can you be so sure of the future when God alone knows what itis to be?"

"Then God will provide for it, " I said, and with that last answer he hadto be satisfied. 

"You must take a letter from me at all events, " said Martin, and sittingat my desk he began to write one. 

It is amazing to me now when I come to think of it that I could havebeen so confident of myself and so indifferent to consequences. But Iwas thinking of one thing only--that Martin must go on his great errand, finish his great work and win his great reward, without making anysacrifice for me. 

After a few minutes he rose from the desk and handed me his letter. 

"Here it is, " he said. "If the worst comes to the worst you may find itof some use some day. "

I took it and doubled it and continued to hold it in my hand. 

"Aren't you going to look at it!" he said. 

"No. "

"Not even to see whom it is written to?"

"That is unnecessary. "

I thought I knew it was written to my husband or my father, and it didnot matter to me which, for I had determined not to use it. 

"It is open--won't you see what it says?"

"That is unnecessary also. "

I thought I knew that Martin had tried to take everything upon himself, and I was resolved that he should not do so. 

He looked at me with that worshipful expression which seen in the eyesof the man who loves her, makes a woman proud to be alive. 

"I feel as if I want to kiss the hem of your dress, Mary, " he said, andafter that there was a moment of heavenly silence. 

It was now half-past eight--the hour when the motor-car had been orderedround to take him to the town--and though I felt as if I could sheddrops of my blood to keep back the finger of my cuckoo clock I pointedit out and said it was time for him to go. 

I think our parting was the most beautiful moment of all my life. 

We were standing a little apart, for though I wanted to throw my armsabout his neck at that last instant I would not allow myself to do so, because I knew that that would make it the harder for him to go. 

I could see, too, that he was trying not to make it harder for me, so westood in silence for a moment while my bosom heaved and his breath camequick. 

Then he took my right hand in both of his hands and said: "There is abond between us now which can never be broken. "

"Never, " I answered. 

"Whatever happens to either of us we belong to each other for ever. "

"For ever and ever, " I replied. 

I felt his hands tighten at that, and after another moment of silence, he said:

"I may be a long time away, Mary. "

"I can wait. "

"Down there a man has to meet many dangers. "

"You will come back. Providence will take care of you. "

"I think it will. I feel I shall. But if I don't. . . . "

I knew what he was trying to say. A shadow seemed to pass between us. Mythroat grew thick, and for a moment I could not speak. But then I heardmyself say:

"Love is stronger than death; many waters cannot quench it. "

His hands quivered, his whole body trembled, and I thought he was goingto clasp me to his breast as before, but he only drew down my foreheadwith his hot hand and kissed it. 

That was all, but a blinding mist seemed to pass before my eyes, andwhen it cleared the door of the room was open and my Martin was gone. 

I stood where he had left me and listened. 

I heard his strong step on the stone flags of the hall--he was going outat the porch. 

I heard the metallic clashing of the door of the automobile--he wasalready in the car. 

I heard the throb of the motor and ruckling of the gravel of thepath--he was moving away. 

I heard the dying down of the engine and the soft roll of the rubberwheels--I was alone. 

For some moments after that the world seemed empty and void. But thefeeling passed, and when I recovered my strength I found Martin's letterin my moist left hand. 

Then I knelt before the fire, and putting the letter into the flames Iburnt it. 

SEVENTY-FIRST CHAPTER

Within, two hours of Martin's departure I had regained completepossession of myself and was feeling more happy than I had ever feltbefore. 

The tormenting compunctions of the past months were gone. It was just asif I had obeyed some higher law of my being and had become a freer andpurer woman. 

My heart leapt within me and to give free rein to the riot of my joy Iput on my hat and cloak to go into the glen. 

Crossing the garden I came upon Tommy the Mate, who told me there hadbeen a terrific thunderstorm during the night, with torrential rain, which had torn up all the foreign plants in his flower-beds. 

"It will do good, though, " said the old man. "Clane out some of theirdirty ould drains, I'm thinkin'. "

Then he spoke of Martin, whom he had seen off, saying he would surelycome back. 

"'Deed he will though. A boy like yander wasn't born to lave his bark inthe ice and snow . . . Not if his anchor's at home, anyway"--with a"glime" in my direction. 

How the glen sang to me that morning! The great cathedral of natureseemed to ring with music--the rustling of the leaves overhead, theticking of the insects underfoot, the bleating of the sheep, the lowingof the cattle, the light chanting of the stream, the deep organ-song ofthe sea, and then the swelling and soaring Gloria in my own bosom, whichshot up out of my heart like a lark out of the grass in the morning. 

I wanted to run, I wanted to shout, and when I came to the paths whereMartin and I had walked together I wanted--silly as it sounds to sayso--to go down on my knees and kiss the very turf which his feet hadtrod. 

I took lunch in the boudoir as before, but I did not feel as if I werealone, for I had only to close my eyes and Martin, from the other sideof the table, seemed to be looking across at me. And neither did I feelthat the room was full of dead laughter, for our living voices seemed tobe ringing in it still. 

After tea I read again my only love-letter, revelling in the deardelightful errors in spelling which made it Martin's and nobody else's, and then I observed for the first time what was said about "the boys ofBlackwater, " and their intention of "getting up a spree. "

This suggested that perhaps Martin had not yet left the island but wasremaining for the evening steamer, in order to be present at some sortof celebrations to be given in his honour. 

So at seven o'clock--it was dark by that time--I was down at the Quay, sitting in our covered automobile, which had been drawn up in asheltered and hidden part of the pier, almost opposite the outgoingsteamer. 

Shall I ever forget the scene that followed?

First, came a band of music playing one of our native songs, which wasabout a lamb that had been lost in the snow, and how the Big Man of theFarm went out in search of it, and found it and brought it home in hisarms. 

Then came a double row of young men carrying flags and banners--fine, clean-limbed lads such as make a woman's heart leap to look at them. 

Then came Martin in a jaunting car with a cheering crowd alongside ofhim, trying to look cheerful but finding it fearfully hard to do so. 

And then--and this touched me most of all--a double line of girls inknitted woollen caps (such as men wear in frozen regions) over theirheads and down the sides of their comely faces. 

I was crying like a child at the sight of it all, but none the less Iwas supremely happy. 

When the procession reached the gangway Martin disappeared into thesteamer, and then the bandsmen ranged themselves in front of it, andstruck up another song:

 "_Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen, Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth_. "

In another moment every voice in the crowd seemed to take up therefrain. 

That brought Martin on to the captain's bridge, where he stoodbareheaded, struggling to smile. 

By this time the last of the ship's bells had rung, the funnels werebelching, and the captain's voice was calling on the piermen to clearaway. 

At last the hawsers were thrown off and the steamer started, but, withMartin still standing bareheaded on the bridge, the people rushed to theend of the pier to see the last of him. 

There they sang again, louder than ever, the girls' clear voices aboveall the rest, as the ship sailed out into the dark sea. 

 _"Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen, Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth. "_

As well as I could, for the mist in my eyes was blinding me, I watchedthe steamer until she slid behind the headland of the bay, round, therevolving light that stands on the point of it--stretching my neckthrough the window of the car, while the fresh wind from the sea smotemy hot face and the salt air licked my parched lips. And then I fellback in my seat and cried for sheer joy of the love that was shown toMartin. 

The crowd was returning down the pier by this time, like a black riverrunning in the darkness and rumbling over rugged stones, and I heardtheir voices as they passed the car. 

One voice--a female voice--said:

"Well, what do you think of _our_ Martin Conrad?"

And then another voice--a male voice--answered:

"By God he's a Man!"

Within a few minutes the pier was deserted, and the chauffeur wassaying:

"Home, my lady?"

"Home, " I answered. 

Seeing Martin off had been too much like watching the lifeboat on a darkand stormy night, when the lights dip behind a monstrous wave and forsome breathless moments you fear they will never rise. 

But as we drove up the head I caught the lights of the steamer again nowfar out at sea, and well I knew that as surely as my Martin was there hewas thinking of me and looking back towards the house in which he hadleft me behind him. 

When we reached the Castle I found to my surprise that every window wasablaze. 

The thrum of the automobile brought Price into the hall. She told methat the yachting party had come back, and were now in their bedroomsdressing for dinner. 

As I went upstairs to my own apartments I heard trills of laughter frombehind several of the closed doors, mingled with the muffled humming ofvarious music-hall ditties. 

And then suddenly a new spirit seemed to take possession of me, and Iknew that I had become another woman. 

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater Icontinued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the lightedwindows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the questionwhich for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day and night--Whyhad I left her behind me?

In spite of all her importunities, all her sweet unselfish thought of myown aims and interests, all her confidence in herself, all her bravedetermination to share responsibility for whatever the future might havein store for us--Why had I left her behind me?

The woman God gave me was mine--why had I left her in the house of a manwho, notwithstanding his infidelities and brutalities, had a right inthe eyes of the law, the church, and the world to call her his wife andto treat her accordingly?

Let me make no pretence of a penitence I did not feel. Never for onemoment did I reproach myself for what had happened. Never for the shadowof a moment did I reproach her. She had given herself to me of herqueenly right and sovereign grace as every good woman in the world mustgive herself to the man she loves if their union is to be pure and true. 

But why did I not see then, as I see now, that it is the law ofNature--the cruel and at the same time the glorious law of Nature--thatthe woman shall bear the burden, the woman shall pay the price?

It is over now, and though many a time since my sweet girl has said outof her stainless heart that everything has worked out for the best, andsuffering is God's salt for keeping our souls alive, when I think ofwhat she went through for me, while I was out of all reach and sight, Iknow I shall never forgive myself for leaving her behind--never, nevernever. 

M. C. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

SEVENTY-SECOND CHAPTER

As this will be the last time I shall have to speak of my husband'sguests, I wish to repeat that I am trying to describe them withoutmalice exactly as they were--selfish, cruel, ill-mannered, andinsincere. 

The dinner-bell rang while I was dressing, and on going downstairs a fewminutes afterwards I found that there had been no attempt to wait forme. 

Already the whole party were assembled at the table, my husband being atthe foot of it, and Alma (incredible as it may seem) in the place of thehostess at the head. 

This in my altered mood, was more than I could bear, so, while thecompany made some attempt to welcome me with rather crude salutations, and old Mrs. Lier cried, "Come along here, my pore dear, and tell me howyou've gotten on while we've been away" (indicating an empty seat by herside), I walked boldly up to Alma, put my hand on the back of her chairand said, "If you please. "

Alma looked surprised. But after a moment she carried off the difficultsituation by taking the seat which had been reserved for me beside hermother, by congratulating me on my improved appearance and herself onrelief from the necessity of filling my place and discharging myresponsible duties. 

My husband, with the rest of the company, had looked up at the awkwardincident, and I thought I saw by his curious grimace that he supposed myfather (of whom he was always in fear) had told me to assert myself. ButAlma, with surer instinct, was clearly thinking of Martin, and almostimmediately she began to speak of him. 

"So your great friend has just gone, dearest. The servants are crazyabout him. We've missed him again, you see. Too bad! I hope you gave himour regrets and excuses--did you?"

The evil one must have taken hold of me by this time, for I said:

"I certainly did not, Alma. "

"Why not, my love?"

"Because we have a saying in our island that it's only the ass that eatsthe cushag"--a bitter weed that grows in barren places. 

Alma joined in the general laughter which followed this ratherintemperate reply, and then led off the conversation On the incidents ofthe cruise. 

I gathered that, encouraged by her success in capturing the Bishop byher entertainment, she had set herself to capture the "aristocracy" ofour island by inviting them to a dance on the yacht, while it lay atanchor off Holmtown, and the humour of the moment was to play battledoreand shuttlecock with the grotesque efforts of our great people (the samethat had figured at my wedding) to grovel before my husband and hisguests. 

"I say, Jimmy, " cried Mr. Vivian in his shrill treble, "do you rememberthe old gal in the gauze who--etc . . . ?"

"But do you remember, " cried Mr. Eastcliff, "the High Bailiff or BumBailiff with the bottle-nose who--etc . . . ?"

"Killing, wasn't it, Vivian?" said one of the ladies. 

"Perfectly killing, " said everybody. 

This shocking exhibition of bad manners had not gone on very long beforeI became aware that it was being improvised for my benefit. 

After Alma had admitted that the Bishop was a "great flirt" of hers, andMr. Vivian, amid shouts of laughter, had christened him her "crush, " sheturned to me and said, with her smiling face slightly drawn down on oneside:

"Mary, my love, you will certainly agree that your islanders who do noteat cushags, poor dears, are the funniest people alive as guests. "

"Not funnier, " I answered, "than the people who laugh at them as hosts. "

It was not easy to laugh at that, so to cover Alma's confusion the menturned the talk to their usual topic, horses and dogs, and I heard agreat deal about "laying on the hounds, " which culminated in a rathervulgar story of how a beater who "wasn't nippy on his pins" had been"peppered from behind, " whereupon he had "bellowed like a bull" until"soothed down by a sov. "

I cannot say how long the talk would have continued in this manner ifold Mrs. Lier, addressing herself to me, had not struck a serioussubject. 

It was about Alma's dog, which was dead. The poor wheezy, spaniel haddied in the course of the cruise, though what the cause of its death wasnobody knew, unless it had been fretting for its mistress during theperiod of quarantine which the absurd regulations of government hadrequired on our return from abroad. 

The dog having died at sea, I presumed it had been buried there, but no, that seemed to shock the company as an unfeeling supposition. The ship'scarpenter had made a coffin for it--a beautiful one of mahogany with aplate-glass inset at the head, and a gilt-lettered inscription below, giving the dog's name, Prue, and its age, three. 

In this condition it had been brought ashore, and was now lying in akind of state in Alma's dressing-room. But to-morrow it was to be buriedin the grounds, probably in the glen, to which the company, all dressedin black, were to follow in procession as at a human funeral. 

I was choking with anger and horror at the recital of these incrediblearrangements, and at the close of it I said in a clear, emphatic voice:

"I must ask you to be good enough not to do that, please. "

"Why not, my dear?" said Alma. 

"Because I do not wish and cannot permit it, " I answered. 

There was an awkward pause after this unexpected pronouncement, and whenthe conversation was resumed my quick ears (which have not always addedto my happiness) caught the half-smothered words:

"Getting a bit sidey, isn't she?"

Nevertheless, when I rose to leave the dining-room, Alma wound her armround my waist, called me her "dear little nun, " and carried me off tothe hall. 

There we sat about the big open fire, and after a while the talk becameas free, as it often is among fashionable ladies of a certain class. 

Mr. Eastcliff's Camilla told a slightly indelicate anecdote of a"dresser" she had had at the theatre, and then another young woman (thesame who "adored the men who went to the deuce for a woman") repeatedthe terms of an advertisement she had seen in a Church newspaper: "Aparlour-maid wants a situation in a family where a footman is kept. "

The laughter which followed this story was loud enough, but it wasredoubled when Alma's mother, from the depths of an arm-chair, said, with her usual solemnity, that she "didn't see nothing to laugh at" inthat, and "the pore girl hadn't no such thought as they had. "

Again I was choking with indignation, and in order to assert myself oncefor all I said:

"Ladies, I will ask you to discontinue this kind of conversation. Idon't like it. "

At last the climax came. 

About ten days after Martin left me I received a telegram, which hadbeen put ashore at Southampton, saying, "Good-bye! God bless you!" andnext day there came a newspaper containing an account of his last nightat Tilbury. 

He had given a dinner to a number of his friends, including his oldcommander and his wife, several other explorers who happened to be inLondon, a Cabinet Minister, and the proprietor of the journal which hadpromoted his expedition. 

They had dined in the saloon of the "Scotia" (how vividly I rememberedit!), finishing up the evening with a dance on deck in the moonlight;and when the time came to break up, Martin had made one of hissentimental little speeches (all heart and not too much grammar), inwhich he said that in starting out for another siege of the South Polehe "couldn't help thinking, with a bit of a pain under the third buttonof his double-breasted waistcoat, of the dear ones they were leavingbehind, and of the unknown regions whither they were tending wheredancing would be forgotten. "

I need not say how this moved me, being where I was, in that uncongenialcompany; but by some mischance I left the paper which contained it onthe table in the drawing-room, and on going downstairs after breakfastnext morning I found Alma stretched out in a rocking-chair before thefire in the hail, smoking a cigarette and reading the report aloud in amock heroic tone to a number of the men, including my husband, whose fatbody (he was growing corpulent) was shaking with laughter. 

It was as much as I could do to control an impulse to jump down andflare out at them, but, being lightly shod, I was standing quietly intheir midst before they were aware of my presence. 

"Ah, " said Alma, with the sweetest and most insincere of her smiles, "wewere just enjoying the beautiful account of your friend's last night inEngland. "

"So I see, " I said, and, boiling with anger underneath, I quietly tookthe paper out of her hand between the tips of my thumb and first finger(as if the contamination of her touch had made it unclean) and carriedit to the fire and burnt it. 

This seemed to be the end of all things. The tall Mr. Eastcliff wentover to the open door and said:

"Deuced fine day for a motor drive, isn't it?"

That gentleman had hitherto shown no alacrity in establishing the truthof Alma's excuse for the cruise on the ground of his visit to "hisfriend who had taken a shoot in Skye;" but now he found himself toodeeply interested in the Inverness Meeting to remain longer, while therest of the party became so absorbed in the Perth and Ayr races, salmon-fishing on the Tay, and stag-shooting in the deer-forests ofInvercauld, that within a week thereafter I had said good-bye to all ofthem. 

All save Alma. 

I was returning from the hall after the departure of a group of myguests when Alma followed me to my room and said:

"My dear, sweet girl, I want you to do me the greatest kindness. "

She had to take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear olddunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary towait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largeststeamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port, perhaps I would not mind . . . Just for a week or two longer. . . . 

What _could_ I say? What I did say was what I had said before, withequal weakness and indiscretion, but less than equal danger. A word, half a word, and almost before it was spoken, Alma's arms were about myneck and she was calling me her "dearest, sweetest, kindest friend inthe world. "

My maid Price was present at this interview, and hardly had Alma leftthe boudoir when she was twitching at my arm and whispering in my ear:

"My lady, my lady, don't you see what the woman wants? She's watchingyou. "

SEVENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

My husband was the next to go. 

He made excuse of his Parliamentary duties. He might be three or fourweeks away, but meantime Alma would be with me, and in any case I wasnot the sort of person to feel lonely. 

Never having heard before of any devotion to his duty as a peer, Iasked if that was all that was taking him to London. 

"Perhaps not all, " he answered, and then, with a twang of voice and atwitch of feature, he said:

"I'm getting sick of this God-forsaken place, and then . . . To tell youthe truth, your own behaviour is beginning to raw me. "

With my husband's departure my triumphal course seemed to come to aclose. Left alone with Alma, I became as weak and irresolute as beforeand began to brood upon Price's warning. 

My maid had found a fierce delight in my efforts to assert myself asmistress in my husband's house, but now (taking her former advantage)she was for ever harping upon my foolishness in allowing Alma to remainin it. 

"She's deceiving you, my lady, " said Price. "_Her_ waiting for a steamerindeed! Not a bit of her. If your ladyship will not fly out at me againand pack me off bag and baggage, I'll tell you what's she's waitingfor. "

"What?"

"She's waiting for . . . She thinks . . . She fancies . . . Well, totell you the honest truth, my lady, the bad-minded thing suspects thatsomething is going to happen to your ladyship, and she's just waitingfor the chance of telling his lordship. "

I began to feel ill. A dim, vague, uneasy presentiment of coming troubletook frequent possession of my mind. 

I tried to suppress it. I struggled to strangle it as an ugly monstercreated by the nervous strain I had been going through, and for a time Isucceeded in doing so. I had told Martin that nothing would happenduring his absence, and I compelled myself to believe that nothing wouldor could. 

Weeks passed; the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave placeto a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly clouds; the landbecame soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed their bare blackboughs; the withered leaves drifted along the roads before blusteringwinds that came up from the sea; the evenings grew long and the morningsdreary; but still Alma, with her mother, remained at Castle Raa. 

I began to be afraid of her. Something of the half-hypnotic spell whichshe had exercised over me when I was a child asserted itself again, butnow it seemed to me to be always evil and sometimes almost demoniacal. 

I had a feeling that she was watching me day and night. Occasionally, when she thought I was looking down, I caught the vivid gaze of hercoal-black eyes looking across at me through her long sable-colouredeyelashes. 

Her conversation was as sweet and suave as ever, but I found myselfcreeping away from her and even shrinking from her touch. 

More than once I remembered what Martin in his blunt way had said ofher: "I hate that woman; she's like a snake; I want to put my foot onit. "

The feeling that I was alone in this great gaunt house with a woman whowas waiting and watching to do me a mischief, that she might step intomy shoes, was preying upon my health and spirits. 

Sometimes I had sensations of faintness and exhaustion for which I couldnot account. Looking into my glass in the morning, I saw that my nosewas becoming pinched, my cheeks thin, and my whole face not merely pale, but grey. 

Alma saw these changes in my appearance, and in the over-sweet tones ofher succulent voice she constantly offered me her sympathy. I alwaysdeclined it, protesting that I was perfectly well, but none the less Ishrank within myself and became more and more unhappy. 

So fierce a strain could not last very long, and the climax came aboutthree weeks after my husband had left for London. 

I was rising from breakfast with Alma and her mother when I was suddenlyseized with giddiness, and, after staggering for a moment, I faintedright away. 

On recovering consciousness I found myself stretched out on the floorwith Alma and her mother leaning over me. 

Never to the last hour of my life shall I forget the look in Alma's eyesas I opened my own. With her upper lip sucked in and her lower oneslightly set forward she was giving her mother a quick side-glance ofevil triumph. 

I was overwhelmed with confusion. I thought I might have been speakingas I was coming to, mentioning a name perhaps, out of that dim andsacred chamber of the unconscious soul into which God alone should see. I noticed, too, that my bodice had been unhooked at the back so as toleave it loose over my bosom. 

As soon as Alma saw that my eyes were open, she put her arm under myhead and began to pour out a flood of honeyed words into my ears. 

"My dear, sweet darling, " she said, "you scared us to death. We mustsend for a doctor immediately--your own doctor, you know. "

I tried to say there was no necessity, but she would not listen. 

"Such a seizure may be of no consequence, my love. I trust it isn't. Buton the other hand, it may be a serious matter, and it is my duty, dearest, my duty to your husband, to discover the cause of it. "

I knew quite well what Alma was thinking of, yet I could not say morewithout strengthening her suspicions, so I asked for Price, who helpedme up to my room, where I sat on the edge of the bed while she gave mebrandy and other restoratives. 

That was the beginning of the end. I needed no doctor to say what hadbefallen me. It was something more stupendous for me than the removal ofmountains or the stopping of the everlasting coming and going of thesea. 

The greatest of the mysteries of womanhood, the most sacred, the mostdivine, the mighty mystery of a new life had come to me as it comes toother women. Yet how had it come? Like a lowering thunderstorm. 

That golden hour of her sex, which ought to be the sweetest and mostjoyful in a woman's life--the hour when she goes with a proud andswelling heart to the one she loves, the one who loves her, and with herarms about his neck and her face hidden in his breast whispers her greatnew secret, and he clasps her more fondly than ever to his heart, because another and closer union has bound them together--that goldenhour had come to me, and there was none to share it. 

O God! O God! How proudly I had been holding up my head! How I had beentrampling on the conventions of morality, the canons of law, and eventhe sacraments of religion, thinking Nature, which had made our heartswhat they are, did not mean a woman to be ashamed of her purestinstincts!

And now Nature herself had risen up to condemn me, and before long thewhole world would be joining in her cry. 

If Martin had been there at that moment I do not think I should havecared what people might think or say of a woman in my condition. But hewas separated from me by this time by thousands of miles of sea, andwas going deeper and deeper every day into the dark Antarctic night. 

How weak I felt, how little, how helpless! Never for a moment did Iblame Martin. But I was alone with my responsibility, I was still livingin my husband's house, and--worst of all--another woman knew my secret. 

SEVENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

Early next day Doctor Conrad came to see me. I thought it significantthat he came in my father's big motor-car--a car of great speed andpower. 

I was in my dressing-gown before the fire in the boudoir, and at thefirst glance of his cheerful face under his iron-grey head I knew whatAlma had said in the letter which had summoned him. 

In his soft voice he asked me a few questions, and though I could havewished to conceal the truth I dared not. I noticed that his facebrightened at each of my replies, and at the end of them he said:

"There is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall be better than everby-and-by. "

Then in his sweet and delicate way (as if he were saying something thatwould be very grateful) he told me what I knew already, and I listenedwith my head down and my face towards the fire. 

He must have been disappointed at the sad way I received his news, forhe proceeded to talk of my general health; saying the great thing insuch a case as mine was to be cheerful, to keep a good heart, and tolook hopefully to the future. 

"You must have pleasant surroundings and the society of agreeablepeople--old friends, old schoolfellows, familiar and happy faces. "

I said "Yes" and "Yes, " knowing only too well how impossible it all was;and then his talk turned on general topics--my father, whose conditionmade his face very grave, and then his wife, Christian Ann, whose namecaused his gentle old eyes to gleam with sunshine. 

She had charged him with a message to me. 

"Tell her, " she had said, "I shall never forget what she did for me inthe autumn, and whiles and whiles I'm thanking God for her. "

That cut me to the quick, but I was nearly torn to pieces by what camenext. 

"Christian Ann told me to say too that Sunny Lodge is longing for you. 'She's a great lady now, ' said she, 'but maybe great ladies have theirtroubles same as ourselves, poor things, and if she ever wants to resther sweet head in a poor woman's bed, Mary O'Neill's little room isalways waiting for her. '"

"God bless her!" I said--it was all I _could_ say--and then, to my greatrelief, he talked on other subjects. 

The one thing I was afraid of was that he might speak of Martin. Heavenalone, which looks into the deep places of a woman's heart in her hourof sorest trial, knows why I was in such dread that he might do so, butsure I am that if he had mentioned Martin at that moment I should havescreamed. 

When he rose to go he repeated his warnings. 

"You'll remember what I said about being bright and cheerful?"

"I'll try. "

"And keeping happy and agreeable faces about you?"

"Ye-s. "

Hardly had he left the room when Alma came sweeping into it, full of Iher warmest and insincerest congratulations. 

"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue. "Wasn't Iright in sending for the doctor? Such news, too! Oh, happy, happy you!But I must not keep you now, dearest. You'll be just crazy to write toyour husband and tell him all about it. "

Alma's mother was the next to visit me. The comfortable old soul, redolent of perfume and glittering with diamonds, began bycongratulating herself on her perspicacity. 

"I knew it, " she said. "When I saw as how you were so and so, I said toAlma as I was sure you were that way. 'Impossible, ' said Alma, but it'sus married women to know, isn't it?"

After that, and some homely counsel out of her own experience--to takemy breakfast in bed in future, avoiding tea, &c. , --she told me howfortunate I was to have Alma in the house at such a moment. 

"The doctor says you're to be kept bright and cheerful, and she's such ahappy heart, is Alma. So crazy about you too! You wouldn't believe it, but she's actually talking of staying with you until the Decembersailing, at all events. "

The prospect of having Alma two months longer, to probe my secret soulas with a red-hot iron, seemed enough to destroy me, but my martyrdomhad only begun. 

Next day, Aunt Bridget came, and the bright glitter of the usually coldgrey eyes behind her gold-rimmed spectacles told me at a glance that hervisit was not an unselfish one. 

"There now, " she said, "you've got to thank me for this. Didn't I giveyou good advice when I told you to be a little blind? It's the only waywith husbands. When Conrad came home with the news I said, 'Betsy, Imust get away to the poor girl straight. ' To be sure I had enough on myhands already, but I couldn't leave you to strangers, could I?"

Hearing no response to this question, Aunt Bridget went on to say thatwhat was coming would be a bond between me and my husband. 

"It always is. It was in my case, anyway. The old colonel didn't behavevery well after our marriage, and times and times I was telling myself Ihad made a rue bargain; but when Betsy came I thought, 'I might havedone better, but I might have done worse, and he's the father of myoffspring, anyway. '"

Hearing no response to this either, Aunt Bridget went on to talk of Almaand her mother. Was not this the woman I suspected with my husband--theyoung one with the big eyes and "the quality toss with her?" Then whydid I have a person like that about the house?

"If you need bright and cheerful company, what's amiss with your auntand your first cousin? Some people are selfish, but I thank the saints Idon't know what selfishness is. I'm willing to do for you what I did foryour poor mother, and _I_ can't say more than that, can I?"

I must have made some kind of response, for Aunt Bridget went on to sayit might be a sacrifice, but then she wouldn't be sorry to leave the BigHouse either. 

"I'm twenty years there, and now I'm to be a servant to my ownstepchild. Dear heart knows if I can bear it much longer. The way thatNessy is carrying on with your father is something shocking. I dobelieve she'll marry the man some day. "

To escape from a painful topic I asked after my father's health. 

"Worse and worse, but Conrad's news was like laughing-gas to the man. Hewould have come with me to-day, but the doctor wouldn't hear of it. He'll come soon though, and meantime he's talking and talking about agreat entertainment. "

"Entertainment?"

"To celebrate the forthcoming event, of course, though nobody is to knowthat except ourselves, it seems. Just a house-warming in honour of yourcoming home after your marriage--that's all it's to be on the outside, anyway. "

I made some cry of pain, and Aunt Bridget said:

"Oh, I know what you're going to say--why doesn't he wait? I'll tell youwhy if you'll promise not to whisper a word to any one. Your father is asick man, my dear. Let him say what he likes when Conrad talks aboutcancer, he knows Death's hand is over him. And thinking it may fallbefore your time has come, he wants to take time by the forelock and seea sort of fulfilment of the hope of his life--and you know what thatis. "

It was terrible. The position in which I stood towards my father was nowso tragic that (wicked as it was) I prayed with all my heart that Imight never look upon his face again. 

I was compelled to do so. Three days after Aunt Bridget's visit myfather came to see me. The day was fine and I was walking on the lawnwhen his big car came rolling up the drive. 

I was shocked to see the change in him. His face was ghastly white, hislips were blue, his massive and powerful head seemed to have sunk intohis shoulders, and his limbs were so thin that his clothes seemed tohang on them; but the stern mouth was there still, and so was themasterful lift of the eyebrows. 

Coming over to meet me with an uncertain step, he said:

"Old Conrad was for keeping me in bed, but I couldn't take rest withoutputting a sight on you. "

After that, and some plain speech out of the primitive man he always wasand will be (about it's being good for a woman to have children becauseit saved her from "losing her stomach" over imaginary grievances), heled me, with the same half-contemptuous tenderness which he used to showto my mother, back to the house and into the drawing-room. 

Alma and her mother were there, the one writing at a desk, the otherknitting on the sofa, and they rose as my father entered, but he wavedthem back to their places. 

"Set down, ma'am. Take your seat, mother. I'm only here for a minute totalk to my gel about her great reception. "

"Reception?" said Alma. 

"Hasn't she told you about it?" he said, and being answered that I hadnot, he gave a rough outline of his project, whereupon Alma, whoseformer attitude towards my father had changed to one of flattery andsubservience, lifted her hands and cried:

"How splendid! Such an inspiration! Only think, my love, you were to bekept bright and cheerful, and what could be better for that purpose?"

In the torment of my soul I urged one objection after another--it wouldbe expensive, we could not afford it. 

"Who asks you to afford it? It's my affair, isn't it?" said my father. 

I was unwell, and therefore unable to undertake the hard work of such anentertainment--but that was the worst of excuses, for Alma jumped inwith an offer of assistance. 

"My dearest child, " she said, "you know how happy I shall be to helpyou. In fact, I'll do all the work and you shall have all the glory. "

"There you are, then, " cried my father, slapping me on the shoulder, andthen, turning to Alma, he told her to set to work without a day's delay. 

"Let everything be done correct even if it costs me a bit of money. "

"Yes, sir. "

"A rael big thing, ma'am, such as nobody has ever seen before. "

"Yes indeed, sir. "

"Ask all the big people on the island--Nessy MacLeod shall send you alist of them. "

"I will, sir. "

"That'll do for the present--I guess I must be going now, or old Conradwill be agate of me. So long, gel, so long. "

I was silenced, I was helpless, I was ashamed. 

I did not know then, what now I know, that, besides the desire ofcelebrating the forthcoming birth of an heir, my father had another andstill more secret object--that of throwing dust in the eyes of hisadvocates, bankers, and insular councillors, who (having expected him tomake money for them by magic) were beginning to whisper that all was notwell with his financial schemes. 

I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that momentthe most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that, shattered inhealth and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this wild extravaganceequally to assert his solvency and to gratify his lifelong passion underthe very wing of Death. 

But oh, my wild woe, my frantic prayers! It was almost as if Satanhimself were torturing me. 

The one terror of the next few days was that my husband might returnhome, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the whole worldof make-believe which my father and Alma were setting up around me wouldtumble about my head like a pack of cards. 

He did not come, but he wrote. After saying that his political dutieswould keep him in London a little longer, he said:

"I hear that your father is getting you to give a great reception inhonour of our home-coming. But why _now_, instead of three months ago?_Do you know the reason?_"

As I read these last words I felt an icy numbness creeping up from myfeet to my heart. My position was becoming intolerable. The convictionwas being forced upon me that I had no right in my husband's house. 

It made no difference that my husband's house was mine also, in thesense that it could not exist without me--I had no right to be there. 

It made no difference that my marriage had been no marriage--I had noright to be there. 

It made no difference that the man I had married was an utterly badhusband--I had no right to be there. 

It made no difference that I was not really an adulterous wife--I had noright to be there. 

Meanwhile Price, my maid, but my only real friend in Castle Raa, withthe liberty I allowed her, was unconsciously increasing my torture. Every night as she combed out my hair she gave me her opinion of myattitude towards Alma, and one night she said:

"Didn't I tell you she was only watching you, my lady? The nasty-mindedthing is making mischief with his lordship. She's writing to him everyday. . . . How do I know? Oh, I don't keep my eyes and my ears opendownstairs for nothing. You'll have no peace of your life, my lady, until you turn that woman out of the house. "

Then in a fit of despair, hardly knowing what I was doing, I covered myface with my hands and said:

"I had better turn myself out instead, perhaps. "

The combing of my hair suddenly stopped, and at the next moment I heardPrice saying in a voice which seemed to come from a long way off:

"Goodness gracious me! Is it like that, my lady?"

SEVENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

Alma was as good as her word. 

She did everything without consulting me--fixed the date of thereception for a month after the day of my father's visit, and sent outinvitations to all "the insular gentry" included in the lists which camefrom Nessy MacLeod in her stiff and formal handwriting. 

These lists came morning after morning, until the invitations issuedreached the grand total of five hundred. 

As the rooms of the Castle were not large enough to accommodate so manyguests, Alma proposed to erect a temporary pavilion. My father agreed, and within a week hundreds of workmen from Blackwater were setting up avast wooden structure, in the form of the Colosseum, on the headlandsbeyond the garden where Martin and I had walked together. 

While the work went on my father's feverish pride seemed to increase. Iheard of messages to Alma saying that no money was to be spared. Thereception was to surpass in grandeur any fête ever held in Ellan. Notknowing what high stakes my father was playing for, I was frightened bythis extravagance, and from that cause alone I wished to escape from thesight of it. 

I could not escape. 

I felt sure that Alma hated me with an implacable hatred, and that shewas trying to drive me away, thinking that would be the easiest means togain her own ends. For this reason, among others, the woman in me wouldnot let me fly, so I remained and went through a purgatory of suffering. 

Price, too, who had reconciled herself to my revelation, was alwaysurging me to remain, saying:

"Why should you go, my lady? You are your husband's wife, aren't you?Fight it out, I say. Ladies do so every day. Why shouldn't you?"

Before long the whole island seemed to be astir about our reception. Every day the insular newspapers devoted columns to the event, givingelaborate accounts of what limitless wealth could accomplish for asingle night's entertainment. In these descriptions there was mucheulogy of my father as "the uncrowned king of Ellan, " as well as praiseof Alma, who was "displaying such daring originality, " but little or nomention of myself. 

Nevertheless everybody seemed to understand the inner meaning of theforthcoming reception, and in the primitive candour of our insularmanners some of the visits I received were painfully embarrassing. 

One of the first to come was my father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, whosmiled his usual bland smile and combed his long beard while he thankedme for acting on his advice not to allow a fit of pique to break up amarriage which was so suitable from points of property and position. 

"How happy your father must be to see the fulfilment of his hopes, " hesaid. "Just when his health is failing him, too! How good! Howgratifying!"

The next to come was the Bishop, who, smooth and suave as ever, congratulated me on putting aside all thoughts of divorce, so that theobject of my marriage might be fulfilled and a good Catholic become theheir of Castle Raa. 

More delicate, but also more distressing, was a letter from Father Dan, saying he had been forbidden my husband's house and therefore could notvisit me, but having heard an angel's whisper of the sweet joy that wascoming to me, he prayed the Lord and His Holy Mother to carry me safelythrough. 

"I have said a rosary for you every day since you were here, my dearchild, that you might be saved from a great temptation. And now I knowyou have been, and the sacrament of your holy marriage has fulfilled itsmission, as I always knew it would. So God bless you, my daughter, andkeep you pure and fit for eternal union with that blessed saint, yourmother, whom the Lord has made His own. "

More than ever after this letter I felt that I must fly from myhusband's house, but, thinking of Alma, my wounded pride, my outragedvanity (as I say, the _woman_ in me), would not let me go. 

Three weeks passed. 

The pavilion had been built and was being hung with gaily paintedbannerets to give the effect of the Colosseum as seen at sunset. Acovered corridor connecting the theatre with the house was being linedwith immense hydrangeas and lit from the roof by lamps that resembledstars. 

A few days before the day fixed for the event Alma, who had been toomuch occupied to see me every day in the boudoir to which I confinedmyself, came up to give me my instructions. 

The entertainment was to begin at ten o'clock. I was to be dressed asCleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room. At the sound ofa fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre preceded by a line ofpages, and accompanied by my husband. After we had taken our places in aprivate box a great ballet, brought specially from a London music-hall, was to give a performance lasting until midnight. Then there was to be acotillon, led by Alma herself with my husband, and after supper thedancing was to be resumed and kept up until sunrise, when a basketful ofbutterflies and doves (sent from the South of France) were to beliberated from cages, and to rise in a multicoloured cloud through thesunlit space. 

I was sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene andthe object which I supposed it was intended to serve. 

The end of it all was that I wrote to my father, concealing the realcause of my suffering, but telling him he could not possibly be aware ofwhat was being done in his name and with his money, and begging him toput an end to the entertainment altogether. 

The only answer I received was a visit from Nessy MacLeod. I can see herstill as she came into my room, the tall gaunt figure with red hair andirregular features. 

"Cousin Mary, " she said, seating herself stiffly on the onlystiff-backed chair, and speaking in an impassive tone, "your letter hasbeen received, but your father has not seen it, his health being such asmakes it highly undesirable that he should be disturbed by unnecessaryworries. "

I answered with some warmth that my letter had not been unnecessary, buturgent and important, and if she persisted in withholding it from myfather I should deliver it myself. 

"Cousin Mary, " said Nessy, "I know perfectly what your letter is, havingopened and read it, and while I am as little as yourself in sympathywith what is going on here, I happen to know that your father has sethis heart on this entertainment, and therefore I do not choose that itshall be put off. "

I replied hotly that in opening my letter to my father she had taken anunwarrantable liberty, and then (losing myself a little) I asked her bywhat right did she, who had entered my father's house as a dependent, dare to keep his daughter's letter from him. 

"Cousin Mary, " said Nessy, in the same impassive tone, "you were alwaysself-willed, selfish, and most insulting as a child, and I am sorry tosee that neither marriage nor education at a convent has chastened yourungovernable temper. But I have told you that I do not choose that youshall injure your father's health by disturbing his plans, and you shallcertainly not do so. "

"Then take care, " I answered, "that in protecting my father's health youdo not destroy it altogether. "

In spite of her cold and savourless nature, she understood my meaning, for after a moment of silence she said:

"Cousin Mary, you may do exactly as you please. Your conduct in thefuture, whatever it may be, will be no affair of mine, and I shall notconsider that I am in any way responsible for it. "

At last I began to receive anonymous letters. They came from variousparts of Ellan and appeared to be in different handwritings. Some ofthem advised me to fly from the island, and others enclosed a list ofsteamers' sailings. 

Only a woman who has been the victim of this species of cowardly torturecan have any idea of the shame of it, and again and again I asked myselfif I ought not to escape from my husband's house before he returned. 

But Price seemed to find a secret joy in the anonymous letters, sayingshe believed she knew the source of them: and one evening towards theend, she came running into my room with a shawl over her head, a look oftriumph in her face, and an unopened letter in her hand. 

"There!" she said. "It's all up with Madame now. You've got the game inyour own hands, my lady, and can send them all packing. "

The letter was addressed to my husband in London. Price had seized thearm of Alma's maid in the act of posting it, and under threat of the law(not to speak of instant personal chastisement) the girl had confessedthat both this letter and others had been written by our housekeeperunder the inspiration of her mistress. 

Without any compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted letterand read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing me withMartin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of the forthcomingentertainment. 

Feeling too degraded to speak, I took the letter in silence out of mymaid's hands, and while I was in the act of locking it away in a drawerAlma came up with a telegram from my husband, saying he was leavingLondon by the early train the following morning and would arrive atBlackwater at half-past three in the afternoon. 

"Dear old Jimmy!" she said, "what a surprise you have in store for him!But of course you've told him already, haven't you? . . . No? Ah, I see, you've been saving it all up to tell him face to face. Oh, happy, happyyou!"

It was too late to leave now. The hour of my trial had come. There wasno possibility of escape. It was just as if Satan had been holding me inthe net of my sin, so that I could not fly away. 

At three o'clock next day (which was the day before the day fixed forthe reception) I heard the motor-car going off to meet my husband atBlackwater. At four o'clock I heard it return. A few minutes afterwardsI heard my husband's voice in the hall. I thought he would come up to medirectly, but he did not do so, and I did not attempt to go down. When, after a while, I asked what had become of him, I was told that he was inthe library with Alma, and that they were alone. 

Two hours passed. 

To justify and fortify myself I thought how badly my husband had behavedto me. I remembered that he had married me from the most mercenarymotives; that he had paid off his mistress with the money that camethrough me; that he had killed by cruelty the efforts I had made to lovehim; that he had humiliated me by gross infidelities committed on myhoneymoon. I recalled the scenes in Rome, the scenes in Paris, and theinsults I had received under my own roof. 

It was all in vain. Whether God means it that the woman's fault inbreaking her marriage vows (whatever her sufferings and excuse) shall begreater than that of the man I do not know. I only know that I wastrembling like a prisoner before her judge when, being dressed fordinner and waiting for the sound of the bell, I heard my husband'sfootsteps approach my door. 

I was standing by the fire at that moment, and I held on to themantelpiece as my husband came into the room. 

SEVENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

He was very pale. The look of hardness, almost of brutality, whichpierced his manner at normal moments had deepened, and I could see at aglance that he was nervous. His monocle dropped of itself from his slowgrey eyes, and the white fat fingers which replaced it trembled. 

Without shaking hands or offering any other sort of salutation heplunged 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, " hesaid. "Of course I know what it is supposed to be--a reception in honourof our home-coming. That explanation may or may not be sufficient forthese stupid islanders, but it's rather too thin for me. Can you tell mewhat your father means by it?"

I knew he knew what my father meant, so I said, trembling like a sheepthat 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. Yourfather is a strange man. There's no knowing what crude things he willnot do to gratify his primitive instincts. But he does not spend five orten 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, whichalways lay underneath, came uppermost. 

"Look here, Mary, " he said. "I came for an explanation and I intend tohave one. Your father may give this affair what gloss he pleases, butyou must know as well as I do what rumour and report are saying, so wemight as well speak plainly. Is it the fact that the doctor has madecertain statements about your own condition, and that your father isgiving this entertainment because . . . Well, because he is expecting anheir?"

To my husband's astonishment I answered:

"Yes. "

"So you admit it? Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me how thatcondition 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 youagain how does that condition come about?"

I was now trembling more than ever, but a kind of forced courage came tome 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 yourcondition come about, I ask you?"

I cannot say what impulse moved me at that moment unless it was thedesire to make a clean breast and an end of everything, but, stepping tomy desk, I took out of a drawer the letter which Price had interceptedand threw it on the table. 

He took it up and read it, with the air of one to whom the contents werenot 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 postingit, " I said. "She confessed that it was one of a number of such letterswhich 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 havejust made you wish to imply that this" (holding out the letter) "is atrumped-up affair, and that Alma is at the bottom of it. You're going tobrazen it out, are you, and shelter your condition under your positionas a married woman?"

I was so taken by surprise by this infamous suggestion that I could notspeak 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 theaccusation contained in this letter. There's only one thing of anyconsequence--is it true?"

My head was reeling, my eyes were dim, my palms were moist, I felt as ifI 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 sofoolish as to invite to my house abused my hospitality and betrayed mywife. Is that what you mean?"

"No, " I said. "He observed the laws of hospitality much better than youdid, and if I am betrayed I betrayed myself. "

I shall never forget the look with which my husband received thisconfession. 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 ourmarriage . . . Your resistance and the ridiculous compact I submittedto? Why did I submit? Because I thought your innocence, yourconvent-bred ideas, and your ignorance of the first conditions ofmatrimony. . . . But I've been fooled, for you now tell me . . . Afterall my complacency . . . That you have deliberately. . . . In the nameof God do you know what you are? There's only one name for a woman whodoes 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 lightningspeed, 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'tyou understand what a letter like this is calling you?"

My heart choked. But the thought that came to me--that, bad as his ownlife had been, he considered he had a right to treat me in this waybecause he was a man and I was a woman--brought strength out of myweakness, 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 firedup for a moment and said:

"You can spare yourself these blasphemies. If I have done wrong, it isI, and not my Church, that is to blame for it. "

"_If_ you have done wrong!" he cried. "Damn it, have you lost all senseof a woman's duty to her husband? While you have been married to me andI have been fool enough not to claim you as a wife because I thought youwere only fit company for the saints and angels, you have beenprostituting 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 tolaugh--loudly, derisively, mockingly. 

"Nothing to you, am I? You don't mind bearing my name, though, and whenyour 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 youshould tell me to my face that somebody else is your real husband, butyou must shunt your spurious offspring into my house. Isn't that what itall comes to . . . All this damnable fuss of your father's . . . Thatyou are going to palm off on me and my name and family your own and thisman's . . . Bastard?"

And with the last word, in the drunkenness of his rage, he lifted hisarm and struck me with the back of his hand across the cheek. 

The physical shock was fearful, but the moral infamy was a hundred-foldworse. I can truly say that not alone for myself did I suffer. When mymind, still going at lightning speed, thought of Martin, who loved me sotenderly, I felt crushed by my husband's blow to the lowest depths ofshame. 

I must have screamed, though I did not know it, for at the next momentPrice was in the room and I saw that the housekeeper (drawn perhaps, asbefore, 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 enjoyto-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 myhusband's hand tingling on my cheek, when Price, after clashing the doorin 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'smother came to comfort me. In her crude and blundering way she told meof 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. Iguess 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 asif I had reached a depth of suffering that was a thousand fathoms toodeep 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 burstof 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 anylonger, " 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. "

SEVENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

The bell rang, but of course I did not go down to dinner. 

As soon as Price had gone off to make the necessary arrangements Iturned the key in the lock of my door, removed my evening gown, andbegan to dress for my flight. 

My brain was numb, but I did my best to confront the new situation thatwas before me. 

Hitherto I had been occupied with the problem of whether I should orshould not leave my husband's house; now I had to settle the question ofwhere I was to go to. 

I dared not think of home, for (Nessy MacLeod and Aunt Bridget apart)the house of my father was the last place I could fly to at a momentwhen I was making dust and ashes of his lifelong expectations. 

Neither dared I think of Sunny Lodge, although I remembered, with a tugof tenderness, Christian Ann's last message about Mary O'Neill's littleroom that was always waiting for me--for I thought of how I had brokenmy pledge to her. 

The only place I could think of was that which Martin had mentioned whenhe wished to carry me away--London. In the mighty world of London Imight hide myself from observation and wait until Martin returned fromhis expedition. 

"Yes, yes, London, " I told myself in my breathless excitement, littleknowing what London meant. 

I began to select the clothes I was to carry with me and to wear on myjourney. They must be plain, for I had to escape from a house in whichunfriendly eyes would be watching me. They must be durable, for duringmy time of waiting I expected to be poor. 

I hunted out some of the quaker-like costumes which had been made for mebefore my marriage; and when I had put them on I saw that they made acertain deduction from my appearance, but that did not matter to menow--the only eyes I wished to look well in being down in the Antarcticseas. 

Then I tried to think of practical matters--how I was to live in Londonand how, in particular, I was to meet the situation that was before me. Surely never did a more helpless innocent confront such a seriousproblem. I was a woman, and for more than a year I had been a wife, butI had no more experience of the hard facts of material existence than achild. 

I thought first of the bank-book which my father had sent me withauthority to draw on his account. But it was then nine o'clock, thebanks were closed for the day, and I knew enough of the world to seethat if I attempted to cash a cheque in the morning my whereabouts wouldhe traced. That must never happen, I must hide myself from everybody;therefore my bank-book was useless. 

"Quite useless, " I thought, throwing it aside like so much waste paper. 

I thought next of my jewels. But there I encountered a similardifficulty. The jewels which were really mine, having been bought bymyself, had been gambled away by my husband at Monte Carlo. Whatremained were the family jewels which had come to me as Lady Raa; butthat was a name I was never more to bear, a person I was never more tothink about, so I could not permit myself to take anything that belongedto her. 

The only thing left to me was my money. I had always kept a good dealof it about me, although the only use I had had for it was to put it inthe plate at church, and to scatter it with foolish prodigality to theboys who tossed somersaults behind the carriage in the road. 

Now I found it all over my room--in my purse, in various drawers, and onthe toilet-tray under my dressing-glass. Gathered together it counted upto twenty-eight pounds. I owed four pounds to Price, and having set themaside, I saw that I had twenty-four pounds left in notes, gold, andsilver. 

Being in the literal and unconventional sense utterly ignorant of thevalue of sixpence, I thought this a great sum, amply sufficient for allmy needs, or at least until I secured employment--for I had from thefirst some vague idea of earning my own living. 

"Martin would like that, " I told myself, lifting my head with a thrillof pride. 

Then I began to gather up the treasures which were inexpressibly moredear to me than all my other possessions. 

One of them was a little miniature of my mother which Father Dan hadgiven me for a wedding-present when (as I know now) he would rather haveparted with his heart's blood. 

Another was a pearl rosary which the Reverend Mother had dropped over myarm the last time she kissed me on the forehead; and the last was myMartin's misspelt love-letter, which was more precious to me thanrubies. 

Not for worlds, I thought, would I leave these behind me, or ever partwith them under any circumstances. 

Several times while I was busy with such preparations, growing more andmore nervous every moment, Price came on tip-toe and tapped softly at mydoor. 

Once it was to bring me some food and to tell me, with many winks (forthe good soul herself was trembling with excitement), that everythingwas "as right as ninepence. " I should get away without difficulty in acouple of hours, and until to-morrow morning nobody would be a penny thewiser. 

Fortunately it was Thursday, when a combined passenger and cargo steamersailed to Liverpool. Of course the motor-car would not be available totake me to the pier, but Tommy the Mate, who had a stiff cart in whichhe took his surplus products to market, would be waiting for me ateleven o'clock by the gate to the high road. 

The people downstairs, meaning my husband and Alma and her mother, weregoing off to the pavilion (where hundreds of decorators were to worklate and the orchestra and ballet were to have a rehearsal), and theyhad been heard to say that they would not be back until "way round aboutmidnight. "

"But the servants?" I asked. 

"They're going too, bless them, " said Price. "So eat your dinner inpeace, my lady, and don't worry about a thing until I come back to fetchyou. "

Another hour passed. I was in a fever of apprehension. I felt like aprisoner who was about to escape from a dungeon. 

A shrill wind was coming up from the sea and whistling about the house. I could hear the hammering of the workmen in the pavilion as well as themusic of the orchestra practising their scores. 

A few minutes before eleven Price returned, carrying one of the smallerof the travelling-trunks I had taken to Cairo. I noticed that it bore noname and no initials. 

"It's all right, " she said. "They've gone off, every mother's son anddaughter of them--all except the housekeeper, and I've caught her out, the cat!"

That lynx-eyed person had begun to suspect. She had seen Tommyharnessing his horse and had not been satisfied with hisexplanation--that he was taking tomatoes to Blackwater to be sent off bythe Liverpool steamer. 

So to watch events, without seeming to watch them, the housekeeper (whenthe other servants had gone off to the rehearsal) had stolen upstairs toher room in the West tower overlooking the back courtyard. 

But Price had been more than a match for her. Creeping up behind, shehad locked the door of the top landing, and now the "little cat" mightscream her head off through the window, and (over the noises of the windand the workmen) it would be only like "tom" shrieking on the tiles. 

"We must be quick, though, " said Price, tumbling into mytravelling-trunk as many of my clothes as it would hold. 

When it was full and locked and corded she said:

"Wait, " and stepped out on the landing to listen. 

After a moment she returned saying:

"Not a sound! Now for it, my lady. "

And then, tying her handkerchief over her head to keep down her hair inthe wind, she picked up the trunk in her arms and crept out of the roomon tiptoe. 

The moment had come to go, yet, eager as I had been all evening toescape from my husband's house, I could scarcely tear myself away, forI was feeling a little of that regret which comes to us all when we aredoing something for the last time. 

Passing through the boudoir this feeling took complete possession of me. Only a few hours before it had been the scene of my deepest degradation, but many a time before it had been the place of my greatest happiness. 

_"You are my wife. I am your real husband. No matter where you are orwhat they do with you, you are mine and always will be. "_

Half-closing the door, I took a last look round--at the piano, the desk, the table, the fireplace, all the simple things associated with mydearest memories. So strong was the yearning of my own soul that I feltas if the soul of Martin were in the room with me at that moment. 

I believe it was. 

"Quick, my lady, or you'll lose your steamer, " whispered Price, and thenwe crossed the landing (which was creaking again) and crept noiselesslydown a back staircase. We were near the bottom when I was startled by aloud knocking, which seemed to come from a distant part of the house. Myheart temporarily stopped its beating, but Price only laughed andwhispered:

"There she is! We've fairly caught her out, the cat. "

At the next moment Price opened an outer door, and after we had passedthrough she closed and locked it behind us. 

We were then in the courtyard behind the house, stumbling in theblinding darkness over cobble-stones. 

"Keep close to me, my lady, " said Price. 

After a few moments we reached the drive. I think I was more nervousthan I had ever been before. I heard the withered leaves behind merustling along the ground before the wind from the sea, and thought theywere the footsteps of people pursuing us. I heard the hammering of theworkmen and the music of the orchestra, and thought they were voicesscreaming to us to come back. 

Price, who was forging ahead, carried the trunk in her arms as if it hadbeen a child, but every few minutes she waited for me to come up to her, and encouraged me when I stumbled in the darkness. 

"Only a little further, my lady, " she said, and I did my best tostruggle on. 

We reached the gate to the high road at last. Tommy the Mate was therewith his stiff cart, and Price, who was breathless after her greatexertion, tumbled my trunk over the tail-board. 

The time had come to part from her, and, remembering how faithful andtrue she had been to me, I hardly knew what to say. I told her I hadleft her wages in an envelope on the dressing-table, and then Istammered something about being too poor to make her a present toremember me by. 

"It doesn't need a present to help me to remember a good mistress, mylady, " she said. 

"God bless you for being so good to me, " I answered, and then I kissedher. 

"I'll remember you by that, though, " she said, and she began to cry. 

I climbed over the wheel of the stiff cart and seated myself on mytrunk, and then Tommy, who had been sitting on the front-board with hisfeet on the outer shaft, whipped up his horse and we started away. 

During the next half-hour the springless cart bobbed along the dark roadat its slow monotonous pace. Tommy never once looked round or spokeexcept to his horse, but I understood my old friend perfectly. 

I was in a fever of anxiety lest I should be overtaken and carried back. Again and again I looked behind. At one moment, when a big motor-car, with its two great white eyes, came rolling up after us, my stormy heartstood still. But it was not my husband's car, and in a little while itsred tail-light disappeared in the darkness ahead. 

We reached Blackwater in time for the midnight steamer and drew up atthe landward end of the pier. It was cold; the salt wind from the seawas very chill. Men who looked like commercial travellers were hurryingalong with their coat-collars turned up, and porters with heavy trunkson their shoulders were striving to keep pace with them. 

I gave my own trunk to a porter who came up to the cart, and then turnedto Tommy to say good-bye. The old man had got down from the shaft andwas smoothing his smoking horse, and snuffling as if he had caught acold. 

"Good-bye, Tommy, " I said--and then something more which I do not wishto write down. 

"Good-bye, lil missie, " he answered (that cut me deep), "I neverbelieved ould Tom Dug would live to see ye laving home like this . . . But wait! Only wait till himself is after coming back, and I'll go bailit'll be the divil sit up for some of them. "

SEVENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

It was very dark. No more than three or four lamps on the pier wereburning, but nevertheless I was afraid that the pier-master wouldrecognise me. 

I thought he did so as I approached the gangway to the saloon, for hesaid:

"Private cabin on main deck aft. "

Nervous as I was, I had just enough presence of mind to say "Steerage, please, " which threw him off the scent entirely, so that he cried, inquite a different voice:

"Steerage passengers forward. "

I found my way to the steerage end of the steamer; and in order toescape observation from the few persons on the pier I went down to thesteerage cabin, which was a little triangular place in the bow, with anopen stove in the middle of the floor and a bleary oil-lamp swingingfrom a rafter overhead. 

The porter found me there, and in my foolish ignorance of the value ofmoney I gave him half a crown for his trouble. He first looked at thecoin, then tested it between his teeth, then spat on it, and finallywent off chuckling. 

The first and second bells rang. I grudged every moment of delay beforethe steamer sailed, for I still felt like a prisoner who was runningaway and might even yet be brought back. 

Seating myself in the darkest corner of the cabin, I waited and watched. There were only two other steerage passengers and they were women. Judging by their conversation I concluded that they were cooks fromlodging-houses on "the front, " returning after a long season to theirhomes in Liverpool. Both were very tired, and they were spreading theirblankets on the bare bunks so as to settle themselves for the night. 

At last the third bell rang. I heard the engine whistle, the funnelbelch out its smoke, the hawsers being thrown off, the gangways beingtaken in, and then, looking through the porthole, I saw the grey piergliding behind us. 

After a few moments, with a feeling of safety and a sense of dangerpassed, I went up on deck. But oh, how little I knew what bitter pain Iwas putting myself to!

We were just then swinging round the lighthouse which stands on thesouth-east headland of the bay, and the flash of its revolving light inmy face as I reached the top of the cabin stairs brought back the memoryof the joyous and tumultuous scenes of Martin's last departure. 

That, coupled and contrasted with the circumstances of my own flight, stealthily, shamefully, and in the dead of night, gave me a pang thatwas almost more than I could bear. 

But my cup was not yet full. A few minutes afterwards we sailed in thedark past the two headlands of Port Raa, and, looking up, I saw thelights in the windows of my husband's house, and the glow over the glassroof of the pavilion. 

What would happen there to-morrow morning when it was discovered that Iwas gone? What would happen to-morrow night when my father arrived, ignorant of my flight, as I felt sure the malice of my husband wouldkeep him?

Little as I knew then of my father's real motives in giving that bizarreand rather vulgar entertainment, I thought I saw and heard everythingthat would occur. 

I saw the dazzling spectacle, I saw the five hundred guests, I saw Almaand my husband, and above all I saw my father, the old man stricken withmortal maladies, the wounded lion whom the shadow of death itself couldnot subdue, degraded to the dust in his hour of pride by the act of hisown child. 

I heard his shouts of rage, his cries of fury, his imprecations on me asone who should never touch a farthing of his fortune. And then I heardthe whispering of his "friends, " who were telling the "true story" of mydisappearance, the tale of my "treacheries" to my husband--just as ifSatan had willed it that the only result of the foolish fête on which myfather had wasted his wealth like water should be the publication of myshame. 

But the bitterest part of my experience was still to come. In a fewminutes we sailed past the headlands of Port Raa, the lights of myhusband's house shot out of view like meteors on a murky night, and thesteamer turned her head to the open sea. 

I was standing by a rope which crossed the bow and holding on to it tosave myself from falling, for, being alone with Nature at last, I wasseeing my flight for the first time in full light. 

I was telling myself that as surely as my flight became known Martin'sname would be linked with mine, and the honour that was dearer to methan, my own would be buried in disgrace. 

O God! O God! Why should Nature be so hard and cruel to a woman? Whyshould it be permitted that, having done no worse than obey the purestimpulses of my heart, the iron law of my sex should rise up to condemnboth me and the one who was dearer to my soul than life itself?

I hardly know how long I stood there, holding on to that rope. There wasno sound now except the tread of a sailor in his heavy boots, aninarticulate call from the bridge, an answering shout from the wheel, the rattling of the wind in the rigging, the throbbing of the engine inthe bowels of the ship, and the monotonous wash of the waves against herside. 

Oh, how little I felt, how weak, how helpless!

I looked up towards the sky, but there seemed to be no sky, no moon, andno stars, only a vaporous blackness that came down and closed about me. 

I looked out to the sea, but there seemed to be no sea, only a hissingsplash of green spray where the steamer's forward light fell on thewater which her bow was pitching up, and beyond that nothing but athreatening and thundering void. 

I did not weep, but I felt as other women had felt before me, as otherwomen have felt since, as women must always feel after they have sinnedagainst the world and the world's law, that there was nothing before mebut the blackness of night. 

"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my cry. "

But all at once a blessed thought came to me. We were travellingeastward, and dark as the night was now, in a few hours the day woulddawn, the sun would shine in our faces and the sky would smile over ourheads!

It would be like that with me. Martin would come back. I was only goingto meet him. It was dark midnight with me now, but I was sailing intothe sunrise!

Perhaps I was like a child, but I think that comforted me. 

At all events I went down to the little triangular cabin with a cheerfulheart, forgetting that I was a runaway, a homeless wanderer, an outcast, with nothing before me but the wilderness of London where I should befriendless and alone. 

The fire had gone out by this time, the oil-lamp was swinging to themotion of the ship, the timbers were creaking, and the Liverpool womenwere asleep. 

SEVENTY-NINTH CHAPTER

At eight o'clock next morning I was in the train leaving Liverpool forLondon. 

I had selected a second-class compartment labelled "For Ladies, " and myonly travelling companion was a tall fair woman, in a seal-skin coat anda very large black hat. She had filled the carriage with the warm odourof eau-de-Cologne and the racks on both sides with her luggage, whichchiefly consisted of ladies' hat boxes of various shapes and sizes. 

Hardly had we started when I realised that she was a very loquacious andexpansive person. 

Was I going all the way? Yes? Did I live in Liverpool? No? In Londonperhaps? No? Probably I lived in the country? Yes? That was charming, the country being so lovely. 

I saw in a moment that if my flight was to be carried out to any purposeI should have to conceal my identity; but how to do so I did not know, my conscience never before having had to accuse me of deliberateuntruth. 

Accident helped me. My companion asked me what was my husband'sprofession, and being now accustomed to think of Martin as my realhusband, I answered that he was a commander. 

"You mean the commander of a ship?"

"Yes. "

"Ah, yes, you've been staying in Liverpool to see him off on a voyage. How sweet! Just what I should do myself if my husband were a sailor. "

Then followed a further battery of perplexing questions. 

Had my husband gone on a long voyage? Yes? Where to? The South. Did Imean India, Australia, New Zealand? Yes, and still farther. 

"Ah, I see, " she said again. "He's probably the captain of a trampsteamer, and will go from port to port as long as he can find a cargo. "

Hardly understanding what my companion meant by this, I half agreed toit, and then followed a volley of more personal inquiries. 

I was young to be married, wasn't I? Probably I hadn't been marriedvery long, had I? And not having settled myself in a home perhaps I wasgoing up to London to wait for my husband? Yes? How wise--town being somuch more cheerful than the country. 

"Any friends there?"

"No. "

"None whatever?"

"None whatever. "

"But won't you be lonely by yourself in London?"

"A little lonely perhaps. "

Being satisfied that she had found out everything about me, mytravelling companion (probably from the mere love of talking) told mesomething about herself. 

She was a fashionable milliner and had a shop in the West End of London. Occasionally she made personal visits to the provinces to take ordersfrom the leading shopkeepers, but during the season she found it moreprofitable to remain in town, where her connection was large, amongpeople who could pay the highest prices. 

By this time we had reached Crewe, and as there was some delay ingetting into the station, my travelling companion put her head out ofthe window to inquire the cause. She was told that a night train fromScotland was in front of us, and we should have to be coupled on to itbefore we could proceed to London. 

This threw her into the wildest state of excitement. 

"I see what it is, " she said. "The shooting season is over and thesociety people are coming down from the moors. I know lots and lots ofthem. They are my best customers--the gentlemen at all events. "

"The gentlemen?"

"Why, yes, " she said with a little laugh. 

After some shunting our Liverpool carriages were coupled to the Scotchtrain and run into the station, where a number of gentlemen inknickerbockers and cloth caps were strolling about the platform. 

My companion seemed to know them all, and gave them their names, generally their Christian names, and often their familiar ones. 

Suddenly I had a shock. A tall man, whose figure I recognised, passedclose by our carriage, and I had only time to conceal myself fromobservation behind the curtain of the window. 

"Helloa!" cried my companion. "There's Teddy Eastcliff. He marriedCamilla, the Russian dancer. They first met in my shop I may tell you. "

I was feeling hot and cold by turns, but a thick veil must have hiddenmy confusion, for after we left Crewe my companion, becoming still moreconfidential, talked for a long time about her aristocratic customers, and I caught a glimpse of a life that was on the verge of a kind offashionable Bohemia. 

More than once I recognised my husband's friends among the number of herclients, and trembling lest my husband himself should become a subjectof discussion, I, made the excuse of a headache to close my eyes and besilent. 

My companion thereupon slept, very soundly and rather audibly, fromRugby to Willesden, where, awakening with a start while the tickets werebeing collected, she first powdered her face by her fashion-glass andthen interested herself afresh in my affairs. 

"Did you say, my dear, that you have no friends in London?"

I repeated that I had none. 

"Then you will go to an hotel, I suppose?"

I answered that I should have to look for something less expensive. 

"In that case, " she said, "I think I know something that will suit youexactly. "

It was a quiet boarding establishment in Bloomsbury--comfortable house, reasonable terms, and, above all, perfectly respectable. In fact, it waskept by her own sister, and if I liked she would take me along in hercab and drop me at the door. Should she?

Looking back at that moment I cannot but wonder that after what I hadheard I did not fear discovery. But during the silence of the last hourI had been feeling more than ever weak and helpless, so that when mycompanion offered me a shelter in that great, noisy, bewildering city inwhich I had intended to hide myself, but now feared I might be submergedand lost, with a willing if not a cheerful heart I accepted. 

Half an hour afterwards our cab drew up in a street off Russell Squareat a rather grimy-looking house which stood at the corner of another andsmaller square that was shut off by an iron railing. 

The door was opened by a young waiter of sixteen or seventeen years, who was wearing a greasy dress-suit and a soiled shirt front. 

My companion pushed into the hall, I followed her, and almost at thesame moment a still larger and perhaps grosser woman than my friend, with the same features and complexion, came out of a room to the leftwith, a serviette in her hand. 

"Sophie!"

"Jane!" cried my companion, and pointing to me she said:

"I've brought you a new boarder. "

Then followed a rapid account of where she had met me, who and what Iwas, and why I had come up to London. 

"I've promised you'll take her in and not charge her too much, youknow. "

"Why, no, certainly not, " said the sister. 

At the next moment the boy waiter was bringing, my trunk into the houseon his shoulder and my travelling companion was bidding me good-bye andsaying she would look me up later. 

When the door was closed I found the house full of the smell of hotfood, chiefly roast beef and green vegetables, and I could hear theclink of knives and forks and the clatter of dishes in the room thelandlady had come from. 

"You'd like to go up to your bedroom at once, wouldn't you?" she said. 

We went up two flights of stairs covered with rather dirty druggeting, along a corridor that had a thin strip of linoleum, and finally up athird flight that was bare to the boards, until we came to a room whichseemed to be at the top of the house and situated in its remotestcorner. 

It was a very small apartment, hardly larger than the room over the hallat home in which Aunt Bridget had made me sleep when I was a child, andit was nearly as cold and cheerless. 

The wall-paper, which had once been a flowery pink, was now pale andpatternless; the Venetian blind over the window (which looked out on thesmaller square) had lost one of its cords and hung at an irregularangle; there was a mirror over the mantelpiece with the silvering muchmottled, and a leather-covered easy chair whereof the spring was brokenand the seat heavily indented. 

"I dare say this will do for the present, " said my landlady, and thoughmy heart was in my mouth I compelled myself to agree. 

"My terms, including meals and all extras, will be a pound a week, " sheadded, and to that also, with a lump in my throat I assented, whereuponmy landlady left me, saying luncheon was on and I could come downstairswhen I was ready. 

A talkative cockney chambermaid, with a good little face, brought me afat blue jug of hot water, and after I had washed and combed I found myway down to the dining-room. 

What I expected to find there I hardly know. What I did find was a largechamber, as dingy as the rest of the house, and as much in need ofrefreshing, with a long table down the middle, at which some twentypersons sat eating, with the landlady presiding at the top. 

The company, who were of both sexes and chiefly elderly, seemed to me atthat first sight to be dressed in every variety of out-of-date clothes, many of them rather shabby and some almost grotesque. 

Raising their faces from their plates they looked at me as I entered, and I was so confused that I stood hesitating near the door until thelandlady called to me. 

"Come up here, " she said, and when I had done so, and taken the seat byher side, which had evidently been reserved for me, she whispered:

"I don't think my sister mentioned your name, my dear. What is it?"

I had no time to deliberate. 

"O'Neill, " I whispered back, and thereupon my landlady, raising hervoice, and addressing the company as if they had been members of herfamily, said:

"Mrs. O'Neill, my dears. "

Then the ladies at the table inclined their heads at me and smiled, while the men (especially those who were the most strangely dressed)rose from their seats and bowed deeply. 

EIGHTIETH CHAPTER

Of all houses in London this, I thought, was the least suitable to me. 

Looking down the table I told myself that it must be the very home ofidle gossip and the hot-bed of tittle-tattle. 

I was wrong. Hardly had I been in the house a day when I realised thatmy fellow-guests were the most reserved and self-centred of all possiblepeople. 

One old gentleman who wore a heavy moustache, and had been a colonel inthe Indian army, was understood to be a student of Biblical prophecy, having collected some thousands of texts which established the identityof the British nation with the lost tribes of Israel. 

Another old gentleman, who wore a patriarchal beard and had taken orderswithout securing a living, was believed to be writing a history of theworld and (after forty years of continuous labour) to have reached thecentury before Christ. 

An elderly lady with a benign expression was said to be a tragic actresswho was studying in secret for a season at the National Theatre. 

Such, and of such kind, were my house-mates; and I have since been toldthat every great city has many such groups of people, the greatprophets, the great historians, the great authors, the great actors whomthe world does not know--the odds and ends of humanity, thrown aside bythe rushing river of life into the gulley-ways that line its banks, theodd brothers, the odd sisters, the odd uncles, the odd aunts, for whomthere is no place in the family, in society, or in the business of theworld. 

It was all very curious and pathetic, yet I think I should have beensafe, for a time at all events, in this little corner of London intowhich chance had so strangely thrown me, but for one unfortunatehappening. 

That was the arrival of the daily newspaper. 

There was never more than a single copy. It came at eight in the morningand was laid on the dining-room mantelpiece, from which (by an unwrittenlaw of the house) it was the duty as well as the honour of the personwho had first finished breakfast to take it up and read the moststartling part of the news to the rest of the company. 

Thus it occurred that on the third morning after my arrival I wasstartled by the voice of the old colonel, who, standing back to thefire, with the newspaper in his hand, cried:

"Mysterious Disappearance of a Peeress. "

"Read it, " said the old clergyman. 

The tea-cup which I was raising to my mouth trembled in my hand, andwhen I set it down it rattled against the saucer. I knew what wascoming, and it came. 

The old colonel read:

_"A telegram from Blackwater announces the mysterious disappearance ofthe young wife of Lord Raa, which appears to have taken place late onThursday night or in the early hours of Friday morning. 

"It will be remembered that the missing lady was married a little morethan a year ago, and her disappearance is the more unaccountable fromthe fact that during the past month she has been actively occupied inpreparing for a fête in honour of her return home after a long and happyhoneymoon. 

"The pavilion in which the fête was to have been held had been erectedon a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea, and the only reasonable conjecture is that the unhappy lady, going outon Thursday night to superintend the final preparations, lost her way inthe darkness and fell over the cliffs. 

"The fact that the hostess was missing was not generally known in Ellanuntil the guests had begun to arrive for the reception on Fridayevening, when the large assembly broke up in great confusion. 

"Naturally much sympathy is felt for the grief-stricken husband. "_

 * * * * *

After the colonel had finished reading I had an almost irresistibleimpulse to scream, feeling sure that the moment my house-mates lookedinto my face they must see that I was the person indicated. 

They did not look, and after a chorus of exclamations ("Mostmysterious!" "What can have become of her?" "On the eve of her fêtetoo!") they began to discuss disappearances in general, eachillustrating his point by reference to the subject of his own study. 

"Perfectly extraordinary how people disappear nowadays, " said one. 

"Extraordinary, sir?" said the old colonel, looking over his spectacles, "why should it be extraordinary that one person should disappear whenwhole nations--the ten tribes for example. . . . "

"But that's a different thing altogether, " said the old clergyman. "Nowif you had quoted Biblical examples--Elisha or perhaps Jonah. . . . "

After the discussion had gone on for several minutes in this way I rosefrom the table on my trembling limbs and slipped out of the room. 

It would take long to tell of the feverish days that followed--hownewspaper correspondents were sent from London to Ellan to inquire intothe circumstances of my disappearance; how the theory of accident gaveplace to the theory of suicide, and the theory of suicide to the theoryof flight; how a porter on the pier at Blackwater said he had carried mytrunk to the steamer that sailed on Thursday midnight, thinking I was amaid from the great house until I had given him half-a-crown (his properfee being threepence); how two female passengers had declared that aperson answering to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool;how these clues had been followed up and had led to nothing; and how, finally, the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of mydisappearance could not be more mysterious if I had been dropped frommid-air into the middle of the Irish Sea. 

But then came another development. 

My father, who was reported to have received the news of my departure ina way that suggested he had lost control of his senses (raging andstorming at my husband like a man demented), having come to theconclusion that I, being in a physical condition peculiar to women, hadreceived a serious shock resulting in a loss of memory, offered fivehundred pounds reward for information that would lead to my discovery, which was not only desirable to allay the distress of my heart-brokenfamily but urgently necessary to settle important questions of title andinheritance. 

With this offer of a reward came a description of my personalappearance. 

_"Age 20, a little under medium height; slight; very black hair;lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave expression;unusually sunny smile. "_

It would be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I heardthese reports read out by the old colonel and the old clergyman. Eventhe nervous stirring of my spoon and the agitated clatter of my knifeand fork made me wonder that my house-mates did not realise the truth, which must I thought, be plainly evident to all eyes. 

They never did, being so utterly immersed in their own theories. But allthe same I sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that dingy house inBloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than once, in my greatagitation, when the reports came near to the truth, I wanted to cry. "Stop, stop, don't you see it is I?"

That I never did so was due to the fact that, not knowing what legalpowers my father might have to compel my return to Ellan, the terrorthat sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the subject of apublic quarrel between my father and my husband, concerning thelegitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and disgrace which thatwould bring not only upon me but upon Martin. 

I had some reason for this fear. 

After my father's offer of a reward there came various spitefulparagraphs (inspired, as I thought, by Alma and written by the clumsierhand of my husband) saying it was reported in Ellan that, if mydisappearance was to be accounted for on the basis of flight, the only"shock" I could have experienced must be a shock of conscience, rumourhaving for some time associated my name with that of a person who wasnot unknown in connection with Antarctic exploration. 

It was terrible. 

Day by day the motive of my disappearance became the sole topic ofconversation in our boarding-house. I think the landlady must haveprovided an evening as well as a morning paper, for at tea in thedrawing-room upstairs the most recent reports were always beingdiscussed. 

After a while I realised that not only my house-mates but all London wasdiscussing my disappearance. 

It was a rule of our boarding-house that during certain hours of the dayeverybody should go out as if he had business to go to, and havingnothing else to do I used to walk up and down the streets. In doing so Iwas compelled to pass certain newsvendors' stalls, and I saw for severaldays that nearly every placard had something about "the missingpeeress. "

When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare with asense of being pursued and the feeling which a nervous woman has whenshe is going down a dark corridor at night--that noiseless footsteps arecoming behind, and a hand may at any moment be laid on her shoulder. 

But nobody troubled me in the streets and the only person in ourboarding-house who seemed to suspect me was our landlady. She saidnothing, but when my lip was quivering while the old colonel read thatcruel word about Martin I caught her little grey eyes looking aslant atme. 

One afternoon, her sister, the milliner, came to see me according to herpromise, and though she, too, said nothing, I saw that, while the oldcolonel and the old clergyman were disputing on the hearthrug aboutsome disappearance which occurred thousands of years ago, she waslooking fixedly at the fingers with which, in my nervousness, I wasruckling up the discoloured chintz of my chair. 

Then in a moment--I don't know why--it flashed upon me that mytravelling companion was in correspondence with my father. 

That idea became so insistent towards dinner-time that I made pretenceof being ill (which was not very difficult) to retire to my room, wherethe cockney chambermaid wrung handkerchiefs out of vinegar and laid themon my forehead to relieve my headache--though she increased it, poorthing, by talking perpetually. 

Next morning the landlady came up to say that if, as she assumed from myname, I was Irish and a Catholic, I might like to receive a visit from aSister of Mercy who called at the house at intervals to attend to thesick. 

I thought I saw in a moment that this was a subterfuge, but feeling thatmy identity was suspected I dared not give cause for further suspicion, so I compelled myself to agree. 

A few minutes later, having got up and dressed, I was standing with myback to the window, feeling like one who would soon have to face anattack, when a soft footstep came up my corridor and a gentle handknocked at my door. 

"Come in, " I cried, trembling like the last leaf at the end of aswinging bough. 

And then an astonishing thing happened. 

A young woman stepped quietly into the room and closed the door behindher. She was wearing the black and white habit of the Little Sisters ofthe Poor, but I knew her long, pale, plain-featured face in an instant. 

A flood of shame, and at the same time a flood of joy swept over me atthe sight of her. 

It was Mildred Bankes. 

EIGHTY-FIRST CHAPTER

"Mary, " said Mildred, "speak low and tell me everything. "

She sat in my chair, I knelt by her side, took one of her hands in bothof mine, and told her. 

I told her that I had fled from my husband's house because I could notbear to remain there any longer. 

I told her that my father had married me against my will, in spite ofmy protests, when I was a child, and did not know that I had any rightto resist him. 

I told her that my father--God forgive me if I did him a wrong--did notlove me, that he had sacrificed my happiness to his lust of power, andthat if he were searching for me now it was only because my absencedisturbed his plans and hurt his pride. 

I told her that my husband did not love me either, and that he hadmarried me from the basest motives, merely to pay his debts and securean income. 

I told her, too, that not only did my husband not love me, but he lovedsomebody else, that he had been cruel and brutal to me, and therefore(for these and other reasons) I could not return to him under anycircumstances. 

While I was speaking I felt Mildred's hand twitching between mine, andwhen I had finished she said:

"But, my dear child, they told me your friends were broken-hearted aboutyou; that you had lost your memory and perhaps your reason, andtherefore it would be a good act to help them to send you home. "

"It's not true, it's not true, " I said. 

And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she told mehow she came to be there--that the woman who had travelled with me inthe train from Liverpool, seeing my father's offer of a reward, hadwritten to him to say that she knew where I was and only needed somebodyto establish my identity; that my father wished to come to London forthis purpose, but had been forbidden by his doctor; that our parishpriest, Father Donovan, had volunteered to come instead, but had beenprohibited by his Bishop; and finally that my father had written to hislawyers in London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I hadbeen together at the Sacred Heart in Rome, and that it was her work nowto look after lost ones and send them safely back to their people. 

"And now the lawyer and the doctors are downstairs, " she said in awhisper, "and they are only waiting for me to say who you are that theymay apply for an order to send you home. "

This terrified me so much that I made a fervent appeal to Mildred tosave me. 

"Oh, Mildred, save me, save me, " I cried. 

"But how can I? how can I?" she asked. 

I saw what she meant, and thinking to touch her still more deeply I toldher the rest of my story. 

I told her that if I had fled from my husband's house it was not merelybecause he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because I, too, lovedsomebody else--somebody who was far away but was coming back, and therewas nothing I could not bear for him in the meantime, no pain orsuffering or loneliness, and when he returned he would protect me fromevery danger, and we should love each other eternally. 

If I had not been so wildly agitated I should have known that this wasthe wrong way with Mildred, and it was not until I had said it all in arush of whispered words that I saw her eyes fixed on me as if they wereabout to start from their sockets. 

"But, my dear, dear child, " she said, "this is worse and worse. Yourfather and your husband may have done wrong, but you have done wrongtoo. Don't you see you have?"

I did not tell her that I had thought of all that before, and did notbelieve any longer that God would punish me for breaking a bond I hadbeen forced to make. But when she was about to rise, saying that afterall it would be a good thing to send me home before I had time to joinmy life to his--whoever he was--who had led me to forget my duty as awife, I held her trembling hands and whispered:

"Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even yet. "

"What is it?" she asked, but already I could see that she knew what Iwas going to say. 

"Mildred, " I said, "if I ran away from my husband it was not merelybecause I loved somebody else, but because. . . . "

I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women likeMildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way ofreading a woman's heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine. 

"Do you mean that . . . That there are consequences . . . Going to be?"she whispered. 

"Yes. "

"Does your husband know?"

"Yes. "

"And your father?"

"No. "

Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying beneathher breath:

"Oh Mother of my God!"

I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a while Isaid:

"Now you see why I can never go back. And you will save me, will younot?"

There was silence for some moments. Mildred had drawn back in her chairas if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length she said:

"It is not for me to judge you, Mary. But the gentlemen will come upsoon to know if you are the Mary O'Neill whom I knew at the SacredHeart, and what am I to say to them?"

"Say no, " I cried. "Why shouldn't you? They'll never know anything tothe contrary. Nobody will know. "

"Nobody?"

I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried toexcuse myself by telling her who the other woman was. 

"It is Alma, " I said. 

"Alma? Alma Lier?"

"Yes. "

And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she hadtortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my husband, whowas a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my place. 

And then I spoke of Martin again--I could not help it--saying that theshame which Alma would bring on him would be a greater grief to me thananything else that could befall me in this world. 

"If you only knew who he is, " I said, "and the honour he is held in, youwould know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than that anydisgrace should fall on him through me. "

I could see that Mildred was deeply moved at this, and though I did notintend to play upon her feelings, yet in the selfishness of my greatlove I could not help doing so. 

"You were the first of my girl friends, Mildred--the very first. Don'tyou remember the morning after I arrived at school? They had torn meaway from my mother, and I was so little and lonely, but you were sosweet and kind. You took me into church for my first visitation, andthen into the garden for my first rosary--don't you remember it?"

Mildred had closed her eyes. Her face was becoming very white. 

"And then don't you remember the day the news came that my mother wasvery ill, and I was to go home? You came to see me off at the station, and don't you remember what you said when we were sitting in the train?You said we might never meet again, because our circumstances would beso different. You didn't think we should meet like this, did you?"

Mildred's face was growing deadly white. 

"My darling mother died. She was all I had in the world and I was allshe had, and when she was gone there was no place for me in my father'shouse, so I was sent back to school. But the Reverend Mother was verykind to me, and the end of it was that I wished to become a nun. Yesindeed, and never so much as on the day you took your vows. "

Mildred's eyes were still closed, but her eyelids were fluttering andshe was breathing audibly. 

"How well I remember it! The sweet summer morning and the snow-whitesunshine, and the white flowers and the white chapel of the LittleSisters, and then you dressed as a bride in your white gown and longwhite veil. I cried all through the ceremony. And if my father had notcome for me then, perhaps I should have been a nun like you now. "

Mildred's lips were moving. I was sure she was praying to our Lady forstrength to resist my pleading, yet that only made me plead the harder. 

"But God knows best what our hearts are made for, " I said. "He knowsthat mine was made for love. And though you may not think it I know Godknows that he who is away is my real husband--not the one they marriedme to. You will not separate us, will you? All our happiness--his andmine--is in your hands. You will save us, will you not?"

Some time passed before Mildred spoke. It may have been only a fewmoments, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I did not know then thatMildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of hope in me. Atlength she said:

"Mary, you don't know what you are asking me to do. When I took my vowsI promised to speak the truth under all circumstances, no matter whatthe consequences, as surely as I should answer to God at the great Dayof Judgment. Yet you wish me to lie. How can I? How can I? Remember myvows, my duty. "

I think the next few minutes must have been the most evil of all mylife. When I saw, or thought I saw, that, though one word would save me, one little word, Mildred intended to give me away to the mendownstairs, I leapt to my feet and burst out on her with the bitterestreproaches. 

"You religious women are always talking about your duty, " I cried. "Younever think about love. Love is kind and merciful; but no, duty, alwaysduty! Love indeed! What do you cold creatures out of the convent, withyour crosses and rosaries, know about love--real love--the blazing firein a woman's heart when she loves somebody so much that she would giveher heart's blood for him--yes, and her soul itself if need be. "

What else I said I cannot remember, for I did not know what I was doinguntil I found myself looking out of the window and panting for breath. 

Then I became aware that Mildred was making no reply to my reproaches, and looking over my shoulder I saw that she was still sitting in mychair with both her hands covering her face and the tears tricklingthrough her fingers on to the linen of her habit. 

That conquered me in a moment. 

I was seized with such remorse that I wished to throw my arms about herneck and kiss her. I dared not do that, now, but I knelt by her sideagain and asked her to forgive me. 

"Forgive me, sister, " I said. "I see now that God has brought us to thispass and there is no way out of it. You must do what you think is right. I shall always know you couldn't have done otherwise. _He_ will knowtoo. And if it must be that disgrace is to fall on him through me . . . And that when he comes home he will find. . . . "

But I could not bear to speak about that, so I dropped my head onMildred's lap. 

During the silence that followed we heard the sound of footsteps comingup the stairs. 

"Listen! They're here, " said Mildred. "Get up. Say nothing. Leaveeverything to me. "

I rose quickly and returned to the window. Mildred dried her eyes, gotup from the chair and stood with her back to the fire-place. 

There was a knock at my door. I do not know which of us answered it, butmy landlady came into the room, followed by three men in tall silk hats. 

"Excuse us, my dear, " she said, in an insincere voice. "These gentlemenare making an examination of the house, and they wish to see your room. May they?"

I do not think I made any reply. I was holding my breath and watchingintently. The men made a pretence of glancing round, but I could seethey were looking at Mildred. Their looks seemed to say as plainly aswords could speak:

"Is it she?"

Mildred hesitated for a moment, there was a dreadful silence andthen--may the holy Virgin bless her!--she shook her head. 

I could bear no more. I turned back to the window. The men, who hadlooked at each other with expressions of surprise, tried to talktogether in ordinary tones as if on common place subjects. 

"So there's nothing to do here, apparently. "

"Apparently not. "

"Let's go, then. Good day, Sister. Sorry to have troubled you. "

I heard the door close behind them. I heard their low voices as theypassed along the corridor. I heard their slow footsteps as they wentdown the stairs. And then, feeling as if my heart would burst, I turnedto throw myself at Sister Mildred's feet. 

But Sister Mildred was on her knees, with her face buried in my bed, praying fervently. 

EIGHTY-SECOND CHAPTER

I did not know then, and it seems unnecessary to say now, why my fathergave up the search for me in London. He did so, and from the day themilliner's clue failed him I moved about freely. 

Then from the sense of being watched I passed into that of being lost. 

Sister Mildred was my only friend in London, but she was practically cutoff from me. The Little Sisters had fixed her up (in the interests ofher work among the lost ones) in a tiny flat at the top of a loftybuilding near Piccadilly, where her lighted window always reminded me ofa lighthouse on the edge of a dangerous reef. But in giving me heraddress she warned me not to come to her except in case of urgent needpartly because further intercourse might discredit her denial, andpartly because it would not be good for me to be called "one of SisterVeronica's girls"--that being Mildred's name as a nun. 

Oh the awful loneliness of London!

Others just as friendless have wandered in the streets of the big city. I knew I was not the first, and I am sure I have not been the last tofind London the most solitary place in the world. But I really and trulythink there was one day of the week when, from causes peculiar to mysituation, my loneliness must have been deeper than that of the mostfriendless refugee. 

Nearly every boarder in our boarding-house used to receive once a weekor once a month a letter containing a remittance from some unknownsource, with which he paid his landlady and discharged his otherobligations. 

I had no such letter to receive, so to keep up the character I had notmade but allowed myself to maintain (of being a commander's wife) I usedto go out once a week under pretence of calling at a shipping office todraw part of my husband's pay. 

In my childish ignorance of the habits of business people I selectedSaturday afternoon for this purpose; and in my fear of encountering myhusband, or my husband's friends in the West End streets, I chose theless conspicuous thoroughfares at the other side of the river. 

Oh, the wearisome walks I had on Saturday afternoons, wet or dry, downthe Seven Dials, across Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall, round theeastern end of the Houses of Parliament, and past Westminster Pier (dearto me from one poignant memory), and so on and on into the monotonousand inconspicuous streets beyond. 

Towards nightfall I would return, generally by the footway acrossHungerford Bridge, which is thereby associated with the most painfulmoments of my life, for nowhere else did I feel quite so helpless and solonely. 

The trains out of Charing Cross shrieking past me, the dark riverflowing beneath, the steamers whistling under the bridge, theautomobiles tooting along the Embankment, the clanging of the electriccars, the arc lamps burning over the hotels and the open flares blazingover the theatres--all the never-resting life of London--and myself inthe midst of the tumultuous solitude, a friendless and homeless girl. 

But God in His mercy saved me from all that--saved me too, in ways inwhich it was only possible to save a woman. 

The first way was through my vanity. 

Glancing at myself in my mottled mirror one morning I was shocked to seethat what with my loneliness and my weary walks I was losing my looks, for my cheeks were hollow, my nose was pinched, my eyes were heavy withdark rings underneath them, and I was plainer than Martin had ever seenme. 

This frightened me. 

It would be ridiculous to tell all the foolish things I did after thatto improve and preserve my appearance for Martin's sake, because everygirl whose sweetheart is away knows quite well, and it is not importantthat anybody else should. 

There was a florist's shop in Southampton Row, and I went there everymorning for a little flower which I wore in the breast of my bodice, making believe to myself that Martin had given it to me. 

There was a jeweller's shop there too, and I sold my wedding ring(having long felt as if it burnt my finger) and bought another weddingring with an inscription on the inside "_From Martin to Mary_. "

As a result of all this caressing of myself I saw after a while, to mygreat joy, that my good looks were coming back; and it would be silly tosay what a thrill of delight I had when, going into the drawing-room ofour boarding-house one day, the old actress called me "Beauty" insteadof the name I had hitherto been known by. 

The second way in which God saved me from my loneliness was through mycondition. 

I did not yet know what angel was whispering to me out of the physicalphase I was passing through, when suddenly I became possessed by apassion for children. 

It was just as if a whole new world of humanity sprang into life for meby magic. When I went out for my walks in the streets I ceased to beconscious of the faces of men and women, and it seemed as if London werepeopled by children only. 

I saw no more of the crowds going their different ways like ants on anant-hill, but I could not let a perambulator pass without peering underthe lace of the hood at the little cherub face whose angel eyes lookedup at me. 

There was an asylum for children suffering from incurable diseases inthe smaller square beside our boarding-house, and every morning afterbreakfast, no matter how cold the day might be, I would open my windowto hear the cheerful voices of the suffering darlings singing theirhymn:

 "_There's a Friend for little children, Above the bright blue sky_. "

Thus six weeks passed, Christmas approached, and the sad old city beganto look glad and young and gay. 

Since a certain night at Castle Raa I had had a vague feeling that I hadthrown myself out of the pale of the Church, therefore I had never goneto service since I came to London, and had almost forgotten thatconfession and the mass used to be sweet to me. 

But going home one evening in the deepening London fog (for the weatherhad begun to be frosty) I saw, through the open doors of a Catholicchurch, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found they were from alittle illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child inthe stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking atit with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while ablack-robed janitor was rattling his keys to make them behave. 

This brought back the memory of Rome and of Sister Angela. But it alsomade me think of Martin, and remember his speech at the public dinner, about saying the prayers for the day with his comrades, that they mightfeel that they were not cut off from the company of Christian men. 

So telling myself he must be back by this time on that lonely plateauthat guards the Pole, I resolved (without thinking of the difference oftime) to go to mass on Christmas morning, in order to be doing the samething as Martin at the same moment. 

With this in my mind I returned to our boarding-house and foundChristmas there too, for on looking into the drawing-room on my wayupstairs I saw the old actress, standing on a chair, hanging holly whichthe old colonel with old-fashioned courtesy was handing up to her. 

They were cackling away like two old hens when they caught sight of me, whereupon the old actress cried:

"Ah, here's Beauty!"

Then she asked me if I would like a ticket for a dress rehearsal onChristmas Eve of a Christmas pantomime. 

"The audience will be chiefly children out of the lanes and alleys roundabout, but perhaps you won't mind that, " she said. 

I told her I should be overjoyed, and at two o'clock the followingafternoon I was in my seat at the corner of the dress-circle of thegreat theatre, from which I could see both the stage and the auditorium. 

The vast place was packed with children from ceiling to floor, and Icould see the invisible hands of thousands of mothers who had put thegirls into clean pinafores and brushed and oiled the tousled heads ofthe boys. 

How their eager faces glistened! How sad they looked when the wickedsisters left Cinderella alone in the kitchen! How bright when theglittering fairy godmother came to visit her! How their little danglingfeet clapped together with joy when the pretty maid went off to the ballbehind six little ponies which pranced along under the magical moonlightin the falling snow!

But the part of the performance which they liked best was their own partwhen, in the interval, the band struck up one of the songs they sang intheir lanes and alleys:

 "_Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee, Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips yew see_. "

That was so loaded with the memory of one of the happiest days of mylife (the day I went with Martin to see the _Scotia_) that, in theyearning of the motherhood still unborn in me, I felt as if I shouldlike to gather the whole screaming houseful of happy children to mybreast. 

But oh why, why, why, does not Providence warn us when we are on theedge of tragic things?

The pantomime rehearsal being over I was hurrying home (for the eveningwas cold, though I was so warm within) when I became aware of a numberof newsmen who were flying up from the direction of the Strand, cryingtheir papers at the top of their voice. 

I did not usually listen to such people, but I was compelled to do sonow, for they were all around me. 

"_Paper--third e'shen--loss of the Sco-sha_. "

The cry fell on me like a thunderbolt. An indescribable terror seizedme. I felt paralysed and stood dead still. People were buying copies ofthe papers, and at first I made a feeble effort to do the same. But myvoice was faint; the newsman did not hear me and he went flying past. 

"_Paper--third e'shen--reported loss of the Sco-sha_. "

After that I dared not ask for a paper. Literally I dared not. I darednot know the truth. I dared not see the dreadful fact in print. 

So I began to hurry home. But as I passed through the streets, stunned, stupefied, perspiring, feeling as if I were running away from somemalignant curse, the newsmen seemed to be pursuing me, for they weredarting out from every street. 

"_Paper--third e'shen--loss of the Sco-sha_. "

Faster and faster I hurried along. But the awful cry was always ringingin my ears, behind, before, and on either side. 

When I reached our boarding-house my limbs could scarcely support me. Ihad hardly strength enough to pull the bell. And before our young waiterhad opened the door two news men, crossing the square, were crying:

"_Paper--third edition--reported loss of the 'Scotia. '_"

EIGHTY-THIRD CHAPTER

As I passed through the hall the old colonel and the old clergyman werestanding by the dining-room door. They were talking excitedly, and whileI was going upstairs, panting hard and holding on by the handrail, Iheard part of their conversation. 

"Scotia was the name of the South Pole ship, wasn't it?"

"Certainly it was. We must send young John out for a paper. "

Reaching my room I dropped into my chair. My faculties had so failed methat for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my tired brainrecalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope began to cling asa drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar. 

After a while I heard some of our boarders talking on the floor below. Opening my door and listening eagerly I heard one of them say, in such acasual tone:

"Rather sad--this South Pole business, isn't it?"

"Yes, if it's true. "

"Doesn't seem much doubt about that--unless there are two ships of thesame name, you know. "

At that my heart leapt up. I had now two rafts to cling to. Just thenthe gong sounded, and my anxiety compelled me to go down to tea. 

As I entered the drawing-room the old colonel was unfolding a newspaper. 

"Here we are, " he was saying. "Reported loss of the _Scotia_--AppallingAntarctic Calamity. "

I tried to slide into the seat nearest to the door, but the old actressmade room for me on the sofa close to the tea-table. 

"You enjoyed the rehearsal? Yes?" she whispered. 

"Hush!" said our landlady, handing me a cup of tea, and then the oldcolonel, standing back to the fire, began to read. 

_"Telegrams from New Zealand report the picking up of large fragments ofa ship which were floating from the Antarctic seas. Among them were thebulwarks, some portions of the deck cargo, and the stern of a boat, bearing the name 'Scotia. '

"Grave fears are entertained that these fragments belong to the schoonerof the South Pole expedition, which left Akaroa a few weeks ago, and thecharacter of some of the remnants (being vital parts of a ship'sstructure) lead to the inference that the vessel herself must havefoundered. "_

"Well, well, " said the old clergyman, with his mouth full of butteredtoast. 

The walls of the room seemed to be moving around me. I could scarcelysee; I could scarcely hear. 

_"Naturally there can be no absolute certainty that the 'Scotia' may notbe still afloat, or that the members of the expedition may not havereached a place of safety, but the presence of large pieces of iceattached to some of the fragments seem to the best authorities to favourthe theory that the unfortunate vessel was struck by one of the hugeicebergs which have lately been floating up from the direction of theAdmiralty Mountains, and in that case her fate will probably remain oneof the many insoluble mysteries of the ocean. "_

"Now that's what one might call the irony of fate, " said the oldclergyman, "seeing that the object of the expedition . . . "

"Hush!"

_"While the sympathy of the public will be extended to the families ofall the explorers who have apparently perished in a brave effort toprotect mankind from one of the worst dangers of the great deep, theentire world will mourn the loss (as we fear it may be) of the heroicyoung Commander, Doctor Martin Conrad, who certainly belonged to theever-diminishing race of dauntless and intrepid souls who seem to beborn will that sacred courage which leads men to render up their livesat the lure of the Unknown and the call of a great idea. "_

I felt as if I were drowning. At one moment there was the shrieking ofwaves about my face; at the next the rolling of billows over my head. 

_"Though it seems only too certain . . . This sacred courage quenched. . . Let us not think such lives as his are wasted . . . Only wastedlives . . . Lives given up . . . Inglorious ease . . . Pursuit of idleamusements. . . . Therefore let loved ones left behind . . . Takecomfort . . . Inspiring thought . . . If lost . . . Not died in vain . . . Never pleasure but Death . . . The lure that draws true hearts. . . . "_

I heard no more. The old colonel's voice, which had been beating on mybrain like a hammer, seemed to die away in the distance. 

"How hard you are breathing. What is amiss?" said our landlady. 

I made no reply. Rising to my feet I became giddy and held on to thetable cloth to prevent myself from falling. 

The landlady jumped up to protect her crockery and at the same momentthe old actress led me from the room. I excused myself on the ground offaintness, and the heat of the house after my quick walk home from thetheatre. 

Back in my bedroom my limbs gave way and I sank to the floor with myhead on the chair. There was no uncertainty for me now. It was all over. The great love which had engrossed my life had gone. 

In the overwhelming shock of that moment I could not think of theworld's loss. I could not even think of Martin's. I could only think ofmy own, and once more I felt as if something of myself had been torn outof my breast. 

"Why? Why?" I was crying in the depths of my heart--why, when I was soutterly alone, so helpless and so friendless, had the light by which Ilived been quenched. 

After a while the gong sounded for dinner. I got up and lay on the bed. The young waiter brought up some dishes on a tray. I sent them downagain. Then time passed and again I heard voices on the floor below. 

"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?"

"What peeress?"

"Don't you remember--the one who ran away from that reprobate Raa?"

"Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now. "

"Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had livedto come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but now. . . . "

"Ah, well, that's the way, you see. "

The long night passed. 

Sometimes it seemed to go with feet of lead, sometimes with gallopingfootsteps. I remember that the clocks outside seemed to strike every fewminutes, and then not to strike at all. At one moment I heard the bellsof a neighbouring church ringing merrily, and by that I knew it wasChristmas morning. 

I did not sleep during the first hours of night, but somewhere in theblank reaches of that short space between night and day (like theslack-water between ebb and flow), which is the only time when Londonrests, I fell into a troubled doze. 

I wish I had not done so, for at the first moment of returningconsciousness I had that sense, so familiar to bereaved ones, of memoryrushing over me like a surging tide. I did not cry, but I felt as if myheart were bleeding. 

The morning dawned dark and foggy. In the thick air of my room thewindow looked at me like a human eye scaled with cataract. It was myfirst experience of a real London fog and I was glad of it. If there hadbeen one ray of sunshine that morning I think my heart would havebroken. 

The cockney chambermaid came with her jug of hot water and wished me "amerry Christmas. " I did my best to answer her. 

The young waiter came with my breakfast. I told him to set it down, butI did not touch it. 

Then the cockney chambermaid came back to make up my room and, findingme still in bed, asked if I would like a fire. I answered "Yes, " andwhile she was lighting a handful between the two bars of my little grateshe talked of the news in the newspaper. 

"It don't do to speak no harm of the dead, but as to them men as 'ad acollusion with a iceberg in the Australier sea, serve 'em jolly wellright I say. What was they a-doing down there, risking their lives fornothing, when they ought to have been a-thinking of their wives andchildren. My Tom wanted to go for a sailor, but I wouldn't let him! Notme! 'If you're married to a sailor, ' says I, ''alf your time you neverknows whether you 'as a 'usband or 'asn't. ' 'Talk sense, ' says Tom. 'I_am_ a-talking sense, ' says I, 'and then think of the kiddies, ' I says. "

After a while I got up and dressed and sat long hours before the fire. Itried to think of others beside myself who must be suffering from thesame disaster--especially of Martin's mother and the good old doctor. Ipictured the sweet kitchen-parlour in Sunny Lodge, with the brightsilver bowls on the high mantelpiece. There was no fire under the_slouree_ now. The light of that house was out, and two old people weresitting on either side of a cold hearth. 

I passed in review my maidenhood, my marriage, and my love, and toldmyself that the darkest days of my loneliness in London had hithertobeen relieved by one bright hope. I had only to live on and Martin wouldcome back to me. But now I was utterly alone, I was in the presence ofnothingness. The sanctuary within me where Martin had lived was only acemetery of the soul. 

"Why? Why? Why?" I cried again, but there was no answer. 

Thus I passed my Christmas Day (for which I had formed such differentplans), and I hardly knew if it was for punishment or warning that I wasat last compelled to think of something besides my own loss. 

My unborn child!

No man on earth can know anything about that tragic prospect, thoughmillions of women must have had to face it. To have a child coming thatis doomed before its birth to be fatherless--there is nothing in theworld like that. 

I think the bitterest part of my grief was that nobody could ever know. If Martin had lived he would have leapt to acknowledge his offspring inspite of all the laws and conventions of life. But being dead he couldnot be charged with it. Therefore the name of the father of my unbornchild must never, never, never be disclosed. 

The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing. 

It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square vanished in avaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were like rows ofbloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness. 

Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me until alittle before dinner time. Then the old actress came up, ratherfantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her head), to saythat the boarders were going to have a dance and wished me to jointhem. I excused myself on the ground of headache, and she said:

"Young women often suffer from it. It's a pity, though! Christmas night, too!"

Not long after she had gone, I heard, through the frequent tooting ofthe taxis in the street, the sound of old-fashioned waltzes being playedon the piano, and then a dull thudding noise on the floor below, mingledwith laughter, which told me that the old boarders were dancing. 

I dare say my head was becoming light. I had eaten nothing for nearlyforty hours, and perhaps the great shock which chance had given me hadbrought me near to the blank shadowland which is death. 

I remember that in some vague way there arose before me a desire to die. It was not to be suicide--my religion saved me from that--but death byexhaustion, by continuing to abstain from food, having no desire for it. 

Martin was gone--what was there to live for? Had I not better die beforemy child came to life? And if I could go where Martin was I should bewith him eternally. 

Still I did not weep, but--whether audibly or only in the unconsciousdepths of my soul--more than once I cried to Martin by name. 

"Martin! Martin! I am coming to you!"

I was in this mood (sitting in my chair as I had done all day andstaring into the small slow fire which was slipping to the bottom of thegrate) when I heard a soft step in the corridor outside. At the nextmoment my door was opened noiselessly, and somebody stepped into theroom. 

It was Mildred, and she knelt by my side and said in a low voice:

"You are in still deeper trouble, Mary--tell me. "

I tried to pour out my heart to her as to a mother, but I could not doso, and indeed there was no necessity. The thought that must have rushedinto my eyes was instantly reflected in hers. 

"It is he, isn't it?" she whispered, and I could only bow my head. 

"I thought so from the first, " she said. "And now you are thinking of. . . Of what is to come?"

Again I could only bow, but Mildred put her arms about me and said:

"Don't lose heart, dear. Our Blessed Lady sent me to take care of you. And I will--I will. "

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

Surely Chance must be the damnedest conspirator against human happiness, or my darling could never have been allowed to suffer so much from thereport that my ship was lost. 

What actually happened is easily told. 

Two days after we left Akaroa, N. Z. , which was the last we saw of theworld before we set our faces towards the Unknown, we ran into a heavylumpy sea and made bad weather of it for forty-eight hours. 

Going at good speed, however, we proceeded south on meridian 179 degreesE. , latitude 68, when (just as we were sighting the Admiralty Mountains, our first glimpse of the regions of the Pole) we encountered asouth-westerly gale, which, with our cumbersome deck cargo, made thehandling of the ship difficult. 

Nevertheless the _Scotia_ rode bravely for several hours over themountainous seas, though sometimes she rolled fifty degrees from side toside. 

Towards nightfall we shipped a good deal of water; the sea smashed inpart of our starboard bulwarks, destroyed the upper deck, washed out thegalley, carried off two of our life boats and sent other large fragmentsof the vessel floating away to leeward. 

At last the pumps became choked, and the water found its way to theengine-room. So to prevent further disaster we put out the fires, andthen started, all hands, to bale out with buckets. 

It was a sight to see every man-jack at work on that job (scientificstaff included), and you would not have thought our spirits were muchdamped, whatever our bodies may have been, if you had been there when Icried, "Are we downhearted, shipmates?" and heard the shout that came upfrom fifty men (some of them waist deep in the water):

"No!"

We had a stiff tussle until after midnight, but we stuck hard, andbefore we turned into our bunks, we had fought the sea and beaten it. 

Next morning broke fine and clear, with that fresh crisp air of theAntarctic which is the same to the explorer as the sniff of battle tothe warhorse, and no sign of the storm except the sight of somelead-white icebergs which had been torn from the islands south-west ofus. 

Everybody was in high spirits at breakfast, and when one of the companystarted "Sweethearts and Wives" all hands joined in the chorus, and(voice or no voice) I had a bit of a go at it myself. 

It is not the most solemn music ever slung together, but perhaps noanthem sung in a cathedral has ascended to heaven with a heartier spiritof thanksgiving. 

When I went up on deck again, though, I saw that enough of our "woodenwalls" had gone overboard to give "scarey people" the impression (ifthings were ever picked up, as I knew they would be, for the set of thecurrent was to the north-east) that we had foundered, and that made methink of my dear one. 

We had no wireless aboard, and the ship would not be going back to NewZealand until March, so I was helpless to correct the error; but Idetermined that the very first message from the very first station I setup on the Antarctic continent should be sent to her to say that I wassafe and everything going splendid. 

What happened on Christmas day is a longer story. 

On the eighteenth of December, having landed some of my deck cargo andprovisions, and sent up my ship to winter quarters, I was on my way, with ponies, dogs, and sledges and a large company of men, all in A1condition, to the lower summit of Mount Erebus, for I intended to set upmy first electric-power-wave station there--that being high enough, wethought, to permit of a message reaching the plateau of the Polar zoneand low enough (allowing for the curvature of the earth) to cover themaximum distance in a northerly direction. 

It was a long reach, but we chose the rocky ridges and moraines, tryingto avoid the crevassed glaciers, and all went well until the twentieth, when just as we were reaching the steeper gradients a strong wind sprangup, blowing straight down the course before us. 

All day long we toiled against it, but the weather grew worse, withgusts of sleet and snow, until the wind reached the force of a hurricaneand the temperature fell to 28 degrees below zero. 

There was nothing to do but to wait for the blizzard to blow itself out, so we plugged down our tents in the shelter of the rocky side of aravine that had an immense snow-field behind it. 

The first night was bad enough, for the canvas of one tent flew intoribbons, and the poor chaps in it had to lie uncovered in theirhalf-frozen sleeping-bags until morning. 

All through the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third the stormcontinued, sweeping with terrific force down the ravine, and whirlingthe snow in dense masses from the snow-field overhead. 

Christmas Eve was worse, with the temperature down to 38 degrees belowzero and the wind up to eighty miles an hour in gusts, and during thegreater part of Christmas Day we were all confined to our sleeping-bagsand half buried in the snow that had drifted in on us. 

As a consequence we had no religious service, and if anybody said a DeProfundis it was between his crackling lips under his frozen beard. Wehad no Christmas dinner either, except a few Plasmon biscuits and a nipof brandy and water, which were served out by good old O'Sullivan whohad come with me as doctor to the expedition. 

On St. Stephen's Day I made a round of the camp and found the poniessuffering terribly and the dogs badly hit. The storm was telling on themen too, for some of them were down with dysentery, and the toes of onepoor chap were black from frostbite. 

I was fit enough myself, thank God, but suffering from want of sleep orrather from a restless feeling which broken sleep brought with it. 

The real truth is that never since I sailed had I been able to shake offthe backward thought that I ought not to have left my dear one behindme. In active work, like the gale, I could dismiss the idea of herdanger; but now that I had nothing to do but to lie like a log in asleeping-bag, I suffered terribly from my recollection of herself-sacrifice and my fear of the consequences that might come of it. 

This was not so bad in the daytime, for even in the midst of thewhirling snow and roaring wind I had only to close my eyes, and I couldsee her as she came up the road in the sunshine that Sunday morning whenshe was returning from church in her drooping hat and fluttering veil, or as she looked at me with her great "seeing eyes" at the last momentof all when she compelled me to come away. 

But the night was the devil. No sooner did I drop off to sleep than Iawoke with a start at the sound of her voice calling me by my name. 

"Martin! Martin!"

It was always a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and Ithink no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was cryingto me to come back. 

That was about the one thing in the world that was impossible to me now, and yet I knew that getting assurance from somewhere that my dear onewas being cared for was the only way to set my mind at rest for the jobthat was before me. 

It may seem ridiculous that I should have thought of that, but everybodywho has ever been with Nature in her mighty solitudes, aloof from thetides of life, knows that the soul of man is susceptible down there tosigns which would seem childish amid the noise and bustle of the world. 

It was like that with me. 

I shared my tent with O'Sullivan, the chief of our scientific staff, andTreacle, who thought it his duty to take care of me, though the work wasgenerally the other way about. 

The old salt had been badly battered, and I had not liked the way he hadbeen mumbling about "mother, " which is not a good sign in a stalwartchap when his strength is getting low. 

So while buttoning up the tent on the night after Christmas Day I was abit touched up to see old Treacle, who had lived the life of a rip, fumbling at his breast and hauling something out with an effort. 

It was a wooden image of the Virgin (about the length of my hand) daubedover with gilt and blue paint, and when he stuck it up in front of hisface as he lay in his sleeping-bag, I knew that he expected to go outbefore morning, and wished _that_ to be the last thing his old eyesshould rest on. 

I am not much of a man for saints myself (having found that we get outof tight places middling well without them), but perhaps what Treacledid got down into some secret place of my soul, for I felt calmer as Ifell asleep, and when I awoke it was not from the sound of my darling'svoice, but from a sort of deafening silence. 

The roaring of the wind had ceased; the blizzard was over; the lamp thathung from the staff of the tent had gone out; and there was a sheet oflight coming in from an aperture in the canvas. 

It was the midnight sun of the Antarctic, and when I raised my head Isaw that it fell full on the little gilded image of the Virgin. Anybodywho has never been where I was then may laugh if he likes and welcome, but that was enough for me. It was all right! Somebody was looking aftermy dear one!

I shouted to my shipmates to get up and make ready, and at dawn, when westarted afresh on our journey, there may have been dark clouds over ourheads but the sun was shining inside of us. 

M. C. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

EIGHTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

Sister Mildred was right. Our Blessed Lady must have interceded for me, because help came immediately. 

I awoke on St. Stephen's morning with that thrilling emotion which everymother knows to be the first real and certain consciousness ofmotherhood. 

It is not for me to describe the physical effects of that great change. But the spiritual effect is another matter. It was like that of amiracle. God in his great mercy, looking down on me in my sorrow, hadsent one of His ministering angels to comfort me. 

It seemed to say:

"Don't be afraid. He who went away is not lost to you. Something ofhimself is about to return. "

I felt no longer that I was to be left alone in my prison-house ofLondon, because Martin's child was to bear me company--to be a linkbetween us, an everlasting bond, so that he and I should be together tothe end. 

I tremble to say what interpretation I put upon all this--how it seemedto be a justification of what I did on the night before Martin leftEllan, as if God, knowing he would not return, had prompted me, so thatwhen my dark hour came I might have this great hope for my comforter. 

And oh how wonderful it was, how strange, how mysterious, how joyful!

Every day and all day and always I was conscious of my unborn child, asa fluttering bird held captive in the hand. The mystery and the joy ofthe coming life soothed away my sorrow, and if I had shed any tears theywould have dried them. 

And then the future!

I seemed to know from the first that it was to be a girl, and already Icould see her face and look into her sea-blue eyes. As she grew up Iwould talk to her of her father--the brave explorer, the man of destiny, who laid down his life in a great work for the world. We should alwaysbe talking of him--we two alone together, because he belonged to us andnobody else in the world besides. Everything I have written here Ishould tell her--at least the beautiful part of it, the part about ourlove, which nothing in life, and not even death itself, could quench. 

Oh the joy of those days! It may seem strange that I should have been sohappy so soon after my bereavement, but I cannot help it if it was so, and it _was_ so. 

Perhaps it was a sort of hysteria, due to the great change in myphysical condition. I do not know. I do not think I want to know. Butone thing is sure--that hope and prayer and the desire of life awoke inme again, as by the touch of God's own hand, and I became another and ahappier woman. 

Such was the condition in which Mildred found me when she returned a fewdays later. Then she brought me down plump to material matters. We hadfirst to consider the questions of ways and means, in order to find outhow to face the future. 

It was the beginning of January, my appointed time was in June, and Ihad only some sixteen pounds of my money left, so it was clear that Icould not stay in the boarding-house much longer. 

Happily Mildred knew of homes where women could live inexpensivelyduring their period of waiting. They were partly philanthropic andtherefore subject to certain regulations, which my resolutedetermination (not to mention Martin's name, or permit it to bementioned) might make it difficult for me to observe, but Mildred hopedto find one that would take me on her recommendation without askingfurther question. 

In this expectation we set out in search of a Maternity Home. What a dayof trial we had! I shall never forget it. 

The first home we called at was a Catholic one in the neighbourhood ofour boarding-house. 

It had the appearance of a convent, and that pleased me exceedingly. After we had passed the broad street door, with its large brass plateand small brass grille, we were shown into a little waiting-room withtiled floor, distempered walls, and coloured pictures of the saints. 

The porteress told us the Mother was at prayers with the inmates, butwould come downstairs presently, and while we waited we heard the dullhum of voices, the playing of an organ, and the singing of the sweetmusic I knew so well. 

Closing my eyes I felt myself back in Rome, and began to pray that Imight be permitted to remain there. But the desire was damped when theMother entered the room. 

She was a stout woman, wearing heavy outdoor boots and carrying her armsinterlaced before her, with the hands hidden in the ample sleeves of herhabit, and her face was so white and expressionless, that it might havebeen cast in plaster of Paris. 

In a rather nervous voice Mildred explained our errand. "Mother, " shesaid, "I cannot tell you anything about this young lady, and I have cometo ask if you will take her on my recommendation. "

"My dear child, " said the Mother, "that would be utterly against ourrule. Not to know who the young lady is, where she comes from, why sheis here, and whether she is married or single or a widow--it is quiteimpossible. "

Mildred, looking confused and ashamed, said:

"She can afford to pay a little. "

"That makes no difference. "

"But I thought that in exceptional cases . . . "

"There can be no exceptional cases, Sister. If the young lady is marriedand can say that her husband consents, or single and can give usassurance that her father or guardian agrees, or a widow and can offersatisfactory references . . . "

Mildred looked across at me, but I shook my head. 

"In that case there seems to be nothing more to say, " said the Mother, and rising without ceremony she walked with us to the door. 

Our next call was at the headquarters of a home which was neitherCatholic nor Protestant, but belonged, Mildred said, to a kind ofUniversal Church, admitting inmates of all denominations. 

It was in a busy thoroughfare and had the appearance of a businessoffice. After Mildred had written her name and the object of our visiton a slip of paper we were taken up in a lift to another office with anopen safe, where a man in a kind of uniform (called a Commissioner) wassigning letters and cheques. 

The Commissioner was at first very courteous, especially to me, and Ihad an uncomfortable feeling that he was mistaking me for somethingquite other than I was until Mildred explained our errand, and then hismanner changed painfully. 

"What you ask is against all our regulations, " he said. "Secrecy impliessomething to hide, and we neither hide anything nor permit anything tobe hidden. In fact our system requires that we should not only help thewoman, but punish the man by making him realise his legal, moral, andreligious liability for his wrong-doing. Naturally we can only do thisby help of the girl, and if she does not tell us at the outset who andwhat the partner of her sin has been and where he is to be found. . . . "

I was choking with shame and indignation, and rising to my feet I saidto Mildred:

"Let us go, please. "

"Ah, yes, I know, " said the Commissioner, with a superior smile, "I haveseen all this before. The girl nearly always tries to shield the guiltyman. But why should she? It may seem generous, but it is really wicked. It is a direct means of increasing immorality. The girl who protects theauthor of her downfall is really promoting the ruin of another woman, and if. . . . "

Thinking of Martin I wanted to strike the smug Pharisee in the face, andin order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out of the office, and into the street, leaving poor Mildred to follow me. 

Our last call was at the home of a private society in a little brickhouse that seemed to lean against the wall of a large lying-in hospitalin the West End of London. 

At the moment of our arrival the Matron was presiding in thedrawing-room over a meeting of a Missionary League for the Conversion ofthe Jews, so we were taken through a narrow lobby into a littleback-parlour which overlooked, through a glass screen, a largeapartment, wherein a number of young women, who had the appearance ofdressmakers, ladies' maids, and governesses, were sewing tiny pieces oflinen and flannel that were obviously baby-clothes. 

There were no carpets on the floors and the house had a slight smell ofcarbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other side of thescreen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping of hands in theroom overhead. 

After a while there was rustle of dresses coming down the bare stairs, followed by the opening and closing of the front door, and then theMatron came into the parlour. 

She was a very tall, flat-bosomed woman in a plain black dress, and sheseemed to take in our situation instantly. Without waiting for Mildred'sexplanation she began to ask my name, my age, and where I came from. 

Mildred fenced these questions as well as she could, and then, with evenmore nervousness than ever, made the same request as before. 

The Matron seemed aghast. 

"Most certainly not, " she said. "My committee would never dream of sucha thing. In the interests of the unfortunate girls who have fallen fromthe path of virtue, as well as their still more unfortunate offspring, we always make the most searching inquiries. In fact, we keep a recordof every detail of every case. Listen to this, " she added, and opening alarge leather-bound hook like a ledger, she began to read one of itsentries:

_"H. J. , aged eighteen years, born of very respectable parents, was ledastray_ [that was not the word] _in a lonely road very late at night bya sailor who was never afterwards heard of. . . . "_

But I could bear no more, and rising from my seat I fled from the roomand the house into the noisy street outside. 

All day long my whole soul had been in revolt. It seemed to me that, while God in His gracious mercy was giving me my child to comfort andconsole me, to uplift and purify me, and make me a better woman than Ihad been before, man, with his false and cruel morality, with hismachine-made philanthropy, was trying to use it as a whip to punish notonly me but Martin. 

But that it should never do! Never as long as I lived! I would die inthe streets first!

Perhaps I was wrong, and did not understand myself, and certainlyMildred did not understand me. When she rejoined me in the street weturned our faces homeward and were half way back to the boarding-housebefore we spoke again. 

Then she said:

"I am afraid the other institutions will be the same. They'll all wantreferences. "

I answered that they should never get them. 

"But your money will be done soon, my child, and then what is to becomeof you?"

"No matter!" I said, for I had already determined to face the worldmyself without help from anybody. 

There was a silence again until we reached the door of ourboarding-house, and then Mildred said:

"Mary, your father is a rich man, and however much you may havedispleased him he cannot wish you to be left to the mercy of theworld--especially when your time comes. Let me write to him. . . . "

That terrified me, for I saw only one result--an open quarrel between myfather and my husband about the legitimacy of my child, who wouldprobably be taken away from me as soon as it was born. 

So taking Mildred by the arm, regardless of the observation ofpassers-by, I begged and prayed and implored of her not to write to myfather. 

She promised not to do so, and we parted on good terms; but I was notsatisfied, and the only result of our day's journeying was that I becamepossessed of the idea that the whole world was conspiring to rob me ofmy unborn child. 

A few days later Mildred called again, and then she said:

"I had another letter from Father Donovan this morning, Mary. Your poorpriest is broken-hearted about you. He is sure you are in London, andcertain you are in distress, and says that with or without his Bishop'sconsent he is coming up to London to look for you, and will never goback until you are found. "

I began to suspect Mildred. In the fever of my dread of losing my childI convinced myself that with the best intentions in the world, merelyout of love for me and pity for my position, she would give meup--perhaps in the very hour of my peril. 

To make this impossible I determined to cut myself off from her andeverybody else, by leaving the boarding-house and taking another andcheaper lodging far enough away. 

I was encouraged in this course by the thought of my diminishingresources, and though heaven knows I had not too many comforts where Iwas. I reproached myself for spending so much on my own needs when Iought to be economising for the coming of my child. 

The end of it all was that one morning early I went down to the cornerof Oxford Street where the motor-omnibuses seem to come and go from allparts of London. 

North, south, east, and west were all one to me, leading to labyrinthsof confused and interminable streets, and I knew as little as a childwhich of them was best for my purpose. But chance seems to play thegreatest part in our lives, and at that moment it was so with me. 

I was standing on the edge of the pavement when a motor-bus labelled"Bayswater Road" stopped immediately in front of me and I stepped intoit, not knowing in the least why I did so. 

Late that evening, having found what I wanted, I returned in the mingledmist and darkness to the boarding-house to pack up my belongings. Thatwas not difficult to do, and after settling my account and sending youngJohn for a cab I was making for the door when the landlady came up tome. 

"Will you not leave your new address, my dear, lest anybody shouldcall, " she said. 

"Nobody will call, " I answered. 

"But in case there should he letters?"

"There will be no letters, " I said, and whispering to the driver todrive up Oxford Street, I got into the cab. 

It was then quite dark. The streets and shops were alight, and Iremembered that as I crossed the top of the Charing Cross Road I lookeddown in the direction of the lofty building in which Mildred's windowwould be shining like a lighthouse over Piccadilly. 

Poor dear ill-requited Mildred! She has long ago forgiven me. She knowsnow that when I ran away from the only friend I had in London it wasbecause I could not help it. 

She knows, too, that I was not thinking of myself, and that in divingstill deeper into the dungeon of the great city, in hiding and buryingmyself away in it, I was asking nothing of God but that He would let melive the rest of my life--no matter how poor and lonely--with the childthat He was sending to be a living link between my lost one and me. 

In the light of what happened afterwards, that was all so strange, andoh, so wonderful and miraculous!

EIGHTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

My new quarters were in the poorer district which stands at the back ofBayswater. 

The street was a cul-de-sac (of some ten small houses on either side)which was blocked up at the further end by the high wall of a factoryfor the "humanization" of milk, and opened out of a busy thoroughfare ofinterior shops like a gully-way off a noisy coast. 

My home in this street was in number one, and I had been attracted to itby a printed card in the semi-circular fan-light over the front door, saying: "A ROOM TO LET FURNISHED. "

My room, which was of fair size, was on the first floor and had twowindows to the street, with yellow holland blinds and white muslincurtains. 

The furniture consisted of a large bed, a horse-hair sofa, threecane-bottomed chairs, a chest of drawers (which stood between thewindows), and a mirror over the mantelpiece, which had pink paper, cutinto fanciful patterns, over the gilt frame, to keep off the flies. 

The floor was covered with linoleum, but there were two strips ofcarpet, one before the fire and the other by the bed: the walls werepapered with a bright red paper representing peonies in bloom; and therewere three pictures--a portrait of a great Welsh preacher with a bardicname ("Dyfed"), an engraving entitled "Feed my Sheep" (showing Jesuscarrying a lamb), and a memorial card of some member of the family ofthe house, in the form of a tomb with a weeping angel on either side. 

I paid five shilling a week for my room, and, as this included the useof kettle, cooking utensils, and crockery, I found to my great delightat the end of the first week that providing for myself (tea, bread andbutter, and eggs being my principal food) I had only spent ten shillingsaltogether, which, according to my present needs, left me enough for mytime of waiting and several weeks beyond. 

Every morning I went out with a little hand-bag to buy my provisions inthe front street; and every afternoon I took a walk in the better partof Bayswater and even into the Park (Hyde Park), which was not far off, but never near Piccadilly, or so far east as Bloomsbury, lest I shouldmeet Sister Mildred or be recognized by the old boarders. 

I had no key to my lodgings, but when I returned home I knocked at thefront door (which was at the top of a short flight of steps from thepavement) and then a string was pulled in the cellar-kitchen in whichthe family of my landlady lived, whereupon the bolt was shot back andthe door opened of itself. 

Finding it necessary to account for myself here as at theboarding-house, I had adhered to my former name, but said I was thewidow of a commander lately lost, at sea, which was as near to the truthas I dared venture. 

I had also made no disguise of the fact that I was expecting a child, acircumstance which secured me much sympathy from the kind-hearted soulswho were now my neighbours. 

They were all womanly women, generally the wives of men working in themilk factory, and therefore the life of our street was very regular. 

At five in the morning you heard the halting step of the old "knockerup, " who went up and down the street tapping at the bedroom windows witha long pole like a fishing-rod. A little before six you heard theclashing of many front doors and the echoing footsteps of the men goingto their work. At half-past seven you heard the whoop of the milkman andthe rattling of his cans. At half-past eight you heard the little feetof the children, like the pattering of rain, going off to the BoardSchool round the corner. And a little after four in the afternoon youheard the wild cries of the juvenile community let loose from lessons, the boys trundling iron hoops and the girls skipping to a measured tuneover a rope stretched from parapet to parapet. 

After that, our street hummed like a bee-hive, with the women, washedand combed, standing knitting at their open doors or exchangingconfidences across the areas until darkness fell and each of the motherscalled her children into bed, as an old hen in the farmyard clucks upher chickens. 

These good creatures were very kind to me. Having satisfied themselvesfrom observation of my habits that I was "respectable, " they called me"our lady"; and I could not help hearing that I was "a nice youngthing, " though it was a little against me that I did not go to church orchapel, and had confessed to being a Catholic--for several of ourfamilies (including that of my landlady) were members of the Welsh ZionChapel not far away. 

Such was the life of the little human cage to which I had confinedmyself, but I had an inner life that was all my own and very sweet tome. 

During the long hours of every day in which I was alone I occupiedmyself in the making of clothes for my baby--buying linen and flanneland worsted, and borrowing patterns from my Welsh landlady. 

This stimulated my tenderness towards the child that was to come, forthe heart of a young mother is almost infantile, and I hardly knowwhether to laugh or cry when I think of the childish things I did andthought and said to myself in those first days when I was alone in myroom in that back street in Bayswater. 

Thus long before baby was born I had christened her. At first I wishedto call her Mary, not because I cared for that name myself, but becauseMartin had said it was the most beautiful in the world. In the end, however, I called her Isabel Mary (because Isabel was my mother's nameand she had been a far better woman than I was), and as I finished mybaby's garments one by one I used to put them away in their drawer, saying to myself, "That's Isabel Mary's binder, " or "Isabel Mary'schristening-robe" as the case might be. 

I dare say it was all very foolish. There are tears in my eyes when Ithink of it now, but there were none then, for though there were momentswhen, remembering Martin, I felt as if life were for ever blank, I wasalmost happy in my poor surroundings, and if it was a cage I had fixedmyself in there was always a bird singing inside of it--the bird thatsang in my own bosom. 

"When Isabel Mary comes everything will he all right, " I used to think. 

This went on for many weeks and perhaps it might have gone on until mytime was full but for something which, occurring under my eyes, made metremble with the fear that the life I was living and the hope I wascherishing were really very wrong and selfish. 

Of my landlady, Mrs. Williams, I saw little. She was a rather hard butno doubt heavily-laden woman, who had to "do" for a swarm of children, besides two young men lodgers who lived in the kitchen and slept in theroom behind mine. Her husband was a quiet man (a carter at the dairy)whom I never saw at all except on the staircase at ten o'clock at night, when, after winding the tall clock on the landing, he went upstairs tobed in his stocking feet. 

But the outstanding member of the family for me was a shock-headed girlof fourteen called Emmerjane, which was a running version of Emma Jane. 

I understood that Emmerjane was the illegitimate daughter of Mrs. Williams's dead sister, and that she had been born in Carnarvon, whichstill shimmered in her memory in purple and gold. 

Emmerjane was the drudge of the family, and I first saw her in thestreet at dusk, mothering a brood of her little cousins, taking Hughieby one hand and Katie by the other and telling Gwennie to lay hold ofDavie lest he should be run over by the milk vans. 

Afterwards she became my drudge also--washing my floor, bringing up mycoals, and cleaning my grate, for sixpence a week, and giving me a greatdeal of information about my neighbours for nothing. 

Thus she told me, speaking broad cockney with a Welsh accent, that thepeople opposite were named Wagstaffe and that the creaking noise I heardwas that of a mangle, which Mrs. Wagstaffe had to keep because herhusband was a drunkard, who stole her money and came home "a-Saturdaynights, when the public-houses turned out, and beat her somethinkshockin', " though she always forgave him the next day and then thecreaking went on as before. 

But the greatest interest of this weird little woman, who had apremature knowledge of things a child ought not to know, was in a househalf-way down the street on the other side, where steam was alwayscoming from the open door to the front kitchen. 

The people who lived there were named Jones. Mrs. Jones "washed" and hada bed-ridden old mother (with two shillings from the Guardians) and adaughter named Maggie. 

Maggie Jones, who was eighteen, and very pretty, used to work in thedairy, but the foreman had "tiken advantage of her" and she had just hada baby. 

This foreman was named Owen Owens and he lived at the last number on ourside, where two unmarried sisters "kept house" for him and sat in the"singing seat" at Zion. 

Maggie thought it was the sisters' fault that Owen Owens did not marryher, so she conceived a great scheme for "besting" them, and this wasthe tragedy which, through Emmerjane's quick little eyes and hercockney-Welsh tongue, came to me in instalments day by day. 

When her baby was a month old Maggie dressed it up "fine" and took it tothe photographers for its "card di visit. " The photographs were a longtime coming, but when they came they were "heavenly lovely" and Maggie"cried to look at them. "

Then she put one in an envelope and addressed it to Owen Owens, andthough it had only to cross the street, she went out after dark to apillar-box a long way off lest anybody should see her posting it. 

Next day she said, "He'll have it now, for he always comes home todinner. He'll take it up to his bedroom, look you, and stand it on thewashstand, and if either of those sisters touch it he'll give themwhat's what. "

After that she waited anxiously for an acknowledgment, and every timethe postman passed down our street her pretty pale face would be at thedoor, saying, "Anything for me to-day?" or "Are you _sure_ there'snothing for me, postman?"

At length a letter came, and Maggie Jones trembled so much that shedared not open it, but at last she tripped up to her room to be "all ofherself, " and then . . . Then there was a "wild screech, " and whenEmmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a deadfaint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens hadreturned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across theface--_Maggie Jones's bastard_. 

It would be impossible to say how this incident affected me. I felt asif a moral earthquake had opened under my feet. 

What had I been doing? In looking forward to the child that was to cometo me I had been thinking only of my own comfort--my own consolation. 

But what about the child itself?

If my identity ever became known--and it might at any moment, by thecasual recognition of a person in the street--how should the position ofmy child differ from that of this poor girl?

A being born out of the pale of the law, as my husband would say it mustbe, an outcast, a thing of shame, without a father to recognise it, andwith its mother's sin to lash its back for ever!

When I thought of that, much as I had longed for the child that was tobe a living link between Martin and me, I asked myself if I had anyright to wish for it. 

I felt I had no right, and that considering my helpless position theonly true motherly love was to pray that my baby might be still-born. 

But that was too hard. It was too terrible. It was like a secondbereavement. I could not and would not do it. 

"Never, never, never!" I told myself. 

EIGHTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

Thinking matters out in the light of Maggie Jones's story, I concludedthat poverty was at the root of nearly everything. If I could stave offpoverty no real harm could come to my child. 

I determined to do so. But there was only one way open to me atpresent--and that was to retrench my expenses. 

I did retrench them. Persuading myself that I had no real need of thisand that, I reduced my weekly outlay. 

This gave me immense pleasure, and even when I saw, after a while, thatI was growing thin and pale, I felt no self-pity of any sort, remembering that I had nobody to look well for now, and only the sweetand glorious duty before me of providing for my child. 

I convinced myself, too, that my altered appearance was natural to mycondition, and that all I needed was fresh air and exercise, therefore Idetermined to walk every day in the Park. 

I did so once only. 

It was one of those lovely mornings in early spring, when the air andthe sky of London, after the long fog and grime of winter, seem to bewashed by showers of sunshine. 

I had entered by a gate to a broad avenue and was resting (for I wasrather tired) on a seat under a chestnut tree whose glistening sheathswere swelling and breaking into leaf, when I saw a number of ladies andgentlemen on horseback coming in my direction. 

I recognised one of them instantly. It was Mr. Vivian, and a beautifulgirl was riding beside him. My heart stood still, for I thought he wouldsee me. But he was too much occupied with his companion to do so. 

"Yes, by Jove, it's killing, isn't it?" he said, in his shrill voice, and with his monocle in his mole-like eye, he rode past me, laughing. 

After that I took my walks in the poorer streets behind Bayswater, butthere I was forced back on my old problem, for I seemed to be alwaysseeing the sufferings of children. 

Thank God, children as a whole are happy. They seem to live in theirhearts alone, and I really and truly believe that if all the doors ofthe rich houses of the West End of London were thrown open to the poorchildren of the East End they would stay in their slums and alleys. 

But some of them suffer there for all that, especially the unfortunateones who enter the world without any legal right to be here, and Iseemed to be coming upon that kind everywhere. 

One evening I saw a tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain under adripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his little heartwould break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but when a rathershame-faced young woman came along, as if returning from her work, heburst out on her and cried:

"Oh, muvver, she's been a-beating of me awrful. "

"Never mind, Johnny, " said the young woman, kneeling on the wet pavementto dry the child's eyes. "Don't cry, that's a good boy. "

It needed no second sight to look into the heart of that tragedy, andthe effect of it upon me was to make me curtail my expenditure stillfurther. 

Looking back on those days I cannot but wonder that I never tried tofind employment. But there was one delicate impediment then--mycondition, which was becoming visible, I thought, to people in thestreet, and causing some of them, especially women, to look round at me. When this became painful I discontinued my walks altogether, and sentEmmerjane on my few errands. 

Then my room became my world. 

I do not think I ever saw a newspaper. And knowing nothing of what wasgoing on, beyond the surge and swell of the life of London as it came tome when I opened my window. I had now, more than ever, the sense ofliving in a dungeon on a rock in the middle of the sea. 

Having no exercise I ate less and less. But I found a certain joy inthat, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and the only painI suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did every day, and lookedat my rapidly diminishing store. 

I knew that my Welsh landlady was beginning to call me _close_, meaningmean; but that did not trouble me in the least, because I told myselfthat every penny I saved out of my own expenses was for my child, tokeep her from poverty and all the evils and injustices that followed inits train. 

As my appointed time drew near my sleep was much broken; and sometimesin the middle of the night, when I heard a solitary footstep going downthe street I would get up, draw aside one of my blinds, and see a lightburning in some bedroom window opposite, and afterwards hear the muffledcry of the small new being who had come as another immigrant into ourchill little world. 

But I made no arrangements for myself until my Welsh landlady came up tomy room one day and asked if I had settled with a doctor. When Ianswered no, she held up her hands and cried:

"Good gracious! Just as I thought. Thee'st got to lose no time, though. "

Happily there was a doctor in our street nearly every day, and if Iwished it she would call him up to me. I agreed and the doctor came nextmorning. 

He was a tall, elderly man with cold eyes, compressed lips, and a sourexpression, and neither his manner nor his speech gave any hint of aconsciousness (which I am sure every true doctor must have) that incoming to a woman in my condition he was entering one of the sacredchambers of human life. 

He asked me a few abrupt questions, told me when he would come again, and then spoke about his fee. 

"My fee is a guinea and I usually get it in advance, " he said, whereuponI went to my drawer, and took out a sovereign and a shilling, notwithout a certain pang at seeing so much go in a moment after I had beensaving so long. 

The doctor had dropped the money into his waistcoat pocket with oh! sucha casual air, and was turning to go, when my Welsh landlady said:

"Her's not doing herself justice in the matter, of food, doctor. "

"Why, what do you eat?" asked the doctor, and as well as I could, out ofmy dry and parched throat, I told him. 

"Tut! tut! This will never do, " he said. "It's your duty to your childto have better food than that. Something light and nourishing every day, such as poultry, fish, chicken broth, beef-tea, and farinaceous foodsgenerally. "

I gasped. 'What was the doctor thinking about?

"Remember, " he said, with his finger up, "the health of the child isintimately dependent on the health of the mother. When the mother is ina morbid state it affects the composition of the blood, and does greatharm to the health of the offspring, both immediately and in after life. Don't forget now. Good day!"

That was a terrible shock to me. In my great ignorance and great love Ihad been depriving myself for the sake of my child, and now I learnedthat I had all the time been doing it a grave and perhaps life-longinjury!

Trying to make amends I sent out for some of the expensive foods thedoctor had ordered me, but when they were cooked I found to my dismaythat I had lost the power of digesting them. 

My pain at this discovery was not lessened next day when my Welshlandlady brought up a nurse whom I had asked her to engage for me. 

The woman was a human dumpling with a discordant voice, and her firstinterest, like that of the doctor, seemed to centre in her fee. 

She told me that her usual terms were a guinea for the fortnight, butwhen she saw my face fall (for I could not help thinking how little Ihad left) she said:

"Some ladies don't need a fortnight, though. Mrs. Wagstaffe, forinstance, she never has no more than five days, and on the sixth she'sback at her mangle. So if five will do, ma'am, perhaps ten and six won'thurt you. "

I agreed, and the nurse was rolling her ample person out of my room whenmy Welsh landlady said:

"But her's not eating enough to keep a linnet, look you. "

And then my nurse, who was what the doctor calls a croaker, began on along series of stories of ladies who, having "let themselves down" haddied, either at childbirth or soon afterwards. 

"It's _after_ a lady feels it if she has to nurse her baby, " said thenurse, "and I couldn't be responsible neither for you nor the child ifyou don't do yourself justice. "

This was a still more terrible possibility--the possibility that I mightdie and leave my child behind me. The thought haunted me all that dayand the following night, but the climax came next morning, whenEmmerjane, while black-leading my grate, gave me the last news of MaggieJones. 

Maggie's mother had been "a-naggin' of her to get work, " asking if shehad not enough mouths to feed "without her bringin' another. "

Maggie had at first been afraid to look for employment, thinkingeverybody knew of her trouble. But after her mother had put the youngminister from Zion on to her to tell her to be "obejent" she had goneout every day, whether the weather was good or bad or "mejum. "

This had gone on for three months (during which Maggie used to stay outlate because she was afraid to meet her mother's face) until one wetnight, less than a week ago, she had come home drenched to the skin, taken to her bed, "sickened for somethink" and died. 

Three days after Emmerjane told me this story a great solemnity fell onour street. 

It was Saturday, when the children do not go to school, but, playing nogames, they gathered in whispering groups round the house with the drawnblinds, while their mothers stood bareheaded at the doors with theirarms under their aprons and their hidden hands over their mouths. 

I tried not to know what was going on, but looking out at the lastmoment I saw Maggie Jones's mother, dressed in black, coming down hersteps, with her eyes very red and her hard face (which was seamed withlabour) all wet and broken up. 

The "young minister" followed (a beardless boy who could have knownnothing of the tragedy of a woman's life), and stepping into the midstof the group of the congregation from Zion, who had gathered there withtheir warm Welsh hearts full of pity for the dead girl, he gave out aWelsh hymn, and they sang it in the London street, just as they had beenused to do at the cottage doors in the midst of their native mountains:

 "_Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau Ar doriad boreu wawr_. "

I could look no longer, so I turned back into my room, but at the nextmoment I heard the rumble of wheels and knew that Maggie Jones was onher way to her last mother of all--the Earth. 

During the rest of that day I could think of nothing but Maggie's child, and what was to become of it, and next morning when Emmerjane came upshe told me that the "young minister" was "a-gettin' it into the 'ouse. "

I think that was the last straw of my burden, for my mind came back witha swift rebound from Maggie Jones's child to my own. 

The thought of leaving my baby behind now terrified and appalled me. Itbrought me no comfort to think that though I was poor my father wasrich, for I knew that if he ever came to know of my child's existence hewould hate it and cast it off, as the central cause of the downfall ofhis plans. 

Yet Martin's child alone, and at the mercy of the world! It could notand must not be!

Then came a fearful thought. I fought against it. I said many "HailMarys" to protect myself from it. But I could not put it away. 

Perhaps my physical condition was partly to blame. Others must judge ofthat. It is only for me to say, in all truth and sincerity, what I feltand thought when I stood (as every woman who is to be a mother must) atthe door of that dark chamber which is Life's greatest mystery. 

I thought of how Martin had been taken from me, as Fate (perhaps forsome good purpose still unrevealed) had led me to believe. 

I thought of how I had comforted myself with the hope of the child thatwas coming to be a link between us. 

I thought of the sweet hours I had spent in making my baby's clothes; inchoosing her name; in whispering it to myself, yes, and to God, too, every night and every morning. 

I thought of how day by day I had trimmed the little lamp I kept burningin the sanctuary within my breast where my baby and I lived together. 

I thought of how this had taken the sting out of death and victory outof the grave. And after that I told myself that, however sweet andbeautiful, _all this had been selfishness and I must put it away_. 

Then I thought of the child itself, who--conceived in sin as my Churchwould say, disinherited by the law, outlawed by society, inheriting myphysical weaknesses, having lost one of its parents and being liable tolose the other--was now in danger of being left to the mercies of theworld, banned from its birth, penniless and without a protector, tobecome a drudge and an outcast or even a thief, a gambler, or a harlot. 

This was what I thought and felt. 

And when at last I knew that I had come to the end of my appointed timeI knelt down in my sad room, and if ever I prayed a fervent prayer, ifever my soul went up to God in passionate supplication, it was that thechild I had longed for and looked forward to as a living link with mylost one _might be born dead_. 

"Oh God, whatever happens to me, let my baby be born dead--I pray, Ibeseech Thee. "

Perhaps it was a wicked prayer. God knows. He will be just. 

EIGHTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

It was Saturday, the seventh of June. The summer had been a cold onethus far; the night was chill and heavy rain was beating against thewindow-pane. 

There was a warm fire in my room for the first time for several months;the single gas jet on the window side of the mantelpiece had been turnedlow, and the nurse, in list slippers, was taking my little flannel andlinen garments out of the chest of drawers and laying them on the flatsteel fender. 

I think I must have had intervals of insensibility, for the moments ofconsciousness came and went with me, like the diving and rising of asea-bird in the midst of swelling waves. 

At one such moment I became aware that the doctor and my Welsh landlady, as well as my nurse, were in the room, and that they were waiting forthe crisis and fearing for my life. 

I heard them talking in low voices which made a drumming noise in myears, like that which the sea makes when it is rolling into a cave. 

"She's let herself down so low, pore thing, that I don't know in theworld what's to happen to her. "

"As God is my witness, look you, I never saw anybody live on so little. "

"I'm not afraid of the mother. I'm more afraid of the child, if you askme. "

Then the drumming noise would die out, and I would only hear somethingwithin myself saying:

"Oh God, oh God, that my child may be born dead. "

At another moment I heard, above the rattle of the rain, the creaking ofthe mangle in the cellar-kitchen on the other side of the street. 

At still another moment I heard the sound of quarrelling in the houseopposite. A woman was screaming, children were shrieking, and a man wasswearing in a thick hoarse voice. 

I knew what had happened--it was midnight, the "public-houses had turnedout, " and Mr. Wagstaffe had came home drunk. 

The night passed heavily. I heard myself (as I had done before) callingon Martin in a voice of wild entreaty:

"Martin! Martin!"

Then remembering that he was gone I began again to pray. I heard myselfpraying to the Blessed Virgin:

"Oh, Mother of my God, let my child . . . "

But a voice which seemed to come from far away interrupted me. 

"Hush, bâch, hush! It will make it harder for thee. "

At length peace came. It seemed to me that I was running out of atempestuous sea, with its unlimited loneliness and cruel depth, into aquiet harbour. 

There was a heavenly calm, in which I could hear the doctor and thenurse and my Welsh landlady talking together in cheerful whispers. 

I knew that everything was over, and with the memory of the storm I hadpassed through still in my heart and brain. I said:

"Is it dead?"

"Dead?" cried the nurse in a voice several octaves higher than usual. "Dear heart no, but alive and well. A beautiful little girl!"

"Yes, your baby is all right, ma'am, " said the doctor, and then my Welshlandlady cried:

"Why did'st think it would be dead, bach? As I am a Christian womanthee'st got the beautifullest baby that ever breathed. "

I could bear no more. The dark thoughts of the days before were over mestill, and with a groan I turned to the wall. Then everything was wipedout as by an angel's wing, and I fell into a deep sleep. 

When I awoke my dark thoughts were vanishing away like a bad dream inthe morning. The rain had ceased, the gas had been put out, and I couldsee by the glow on the peonies of the wall-paper that the sun wasshining with a soft red light through the holland blinds of my windows. 

I heard the sparrows chirping on the sills outside; I heard the milkmanrattling his cans; I heard the bells of a neighbouring church ringingfor early communion. 

I closed my eyes and held my breath and listened to the sounds in my ownroom. I heard the kettle singing over the fire; I heard somebody hummingsoftly, and beating a foot on the floor in time to the tune and then Iheard a low voice (it was Emmerjane's) saying from somewhere near mybed:

"I dunno but what she's awake. Her breathing ain't a-goin' now. "

Then I turned and saw the nurse sitting before the fire with somethingon her lap. I knew what it was. It was my child, and it was asleep. Inspite of my dark thoughts my heart yearned for it. 

And then came the great miracle. 

My child awoke and began to cry. It was a faint cry, oh! so thin andweak, but it went thundering and thundering through me. There was amoment of awful struggle, and then a mighty torrent of love swept overme. 

It was Motherhood. 

My child! Mine! Flesh of my flesh! Oh God! Oh God!

All my desire for my baby's death to save it from the pains of life wasgone, and my heart, starved so long, throbbed with tenderness. I raisedmyself in bed, in spite of my nurse's protest, and cried to her to giveme my baby. 

"Give her to me. Give her to me. "

"By-and-by, by-and-by, " said the nurse. 

"Now, now! I can wait no longer. "

"But you must take some food first. Emmerjane, give her that glass ofmilk and water. "

I drank the milk just to satisfy them, and then held out my arms for mychild. 

"Give her to me--quick, quick!"

"Here she is then, the jewel!"

Oh! the joy of that moment when I first took my baby in my arms, andlooked into her face, and saw my own features and the sea-blue eyes ofMartin! Oh the rapture of my first eager kiss!

I suppose I must have been rough with my little cherub in the fervour ofmy love, for she began to cry again. 

"There! there!" said the nurse. "Be good now, or I must take baby away. "

But heaven had taught me another lesson, and instantly, instinctively, Iput my baby to my breast. Instantly and instinctively, too, my babyturned to it with its little mouth open and its little fingers feelingfor the place. 

"Oh God! My God! Oh Mother of my God!"

And then in that happiness that is beyond all earthly bliss--thehappiness of a mother when she first clasps her baby to her breast--Ibegan to cry. 

I had not cried for months--not since that night in Ellan which I didnot wish to remember any more--but now my tears gushed out and ran downmy face like rain. 

I cried on Martin once more--I could not help it. And looking down atthe closed eyes of my child my soul gushed out in gratitude to God, whohad sent me this for all I had suffered. 

"Hush, hush! You will do yourself a mischief and it will be bad for themilk, " said the nurse. 

After that I tried to control myself. But I found a fierce and feverishdelight in suckling my child. It seemed as if every drop my baby drewgave me a spiritual as well as a physical joy--cooling my blood and mybrain and wiping out all my troubles. 

Oh mystery of mysteries! Oh miracle of miracles!

My baby was at my breast and my sufferings were at an end. 

EIGHTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

That was a long, long day of happiness. 

It was both very long and very short, for it passed like a dream. 

What wonderful happenings were crowded into it!

First the nurse, from the dizzy heights of her greater experience andsuperior knowledge, indulged my infantile anxieties by allowing me tolook on while baby was being bathed, and rewarded me for "being good" bymany praises of my baby's beauty. 

"I've nursed a-many in my time, " she said, "but I don't mind saying asI've never had a bonnier babby on my knee. Look at her legs now, sowhite and plump and dimpled. Have you _ever_ seen anythink so putty?"

I confessed that I never had, and when nurse showed me how to fix thebinder, and put on the barrow-coat without disturbing baby while asleep, I thought her a wonderful woman. 

Emmerjane, who had with difficulty been kept out of the room last nightand was now rushing breathlessly up and down stairs, wished to hold babyfor a moment, and at length out of the magnificence of my generosity Iallowed her to do so, only warning her, as she loved her life, to holdtight and not let baby fall. 

"How'd you mean?" said the premature little mother. "_Me_ let her fall?Not much!"

Every hour, according to the doctor's orders, I gave baby the breast. Ido not know which was my greatest joy--to feast my eyes on her while shesucked and to see her little head fall back with her little mouth openwhen she had had enough, or to watch her when she stretched herself andhiccoughed, and then grasped my thumb with her little tight fingers. 

Oh, the wild, inexpressible delight of it!

Every hour had its surprise. Every few minutes had their cause ofwonder. 

It rather hurt me when baby cried, and I dare say my own foolish lipwould drop at such moments, but when I saw that there were no tears inher eyes, and she was only calling for her food, I pleaded with nurse tolet me give her the breast again. 

The sun shone all day long, and though the holland window blinds werekept down to subdue the light, for my sake and perhaps for baby's, Ithought my room looked perfectly beautiful. It might be poor and shabby, but flights of angels could not have made it more heavenly than it wasin my eyes then. 

In the afternoon nurse told me I must take some sleep myself, but Iwould not sleep until baby slept, so she had to give me my cherub again, and I sat up and rocked her and for a while I sang--as softly as Icould--a little lullaby. 

It was a lullaby I had learned at Nemi from the Italian women inembroidered outside stays, who so love their children; and though I knewquite well that it had been written for the Mother of all Mothers, who, after she had been turned away from every door, had been forced to takerefuge in a stable in Bethlehem, I was in such an ecstasy of spiritualhappiness that I thought it no irreverence to change it a little and tosing it in my London lodging to my human child. 

 "_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee, Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_. "

I dare say my voice was sweet that day--a mother's voice is alwayssweet--for when Emmerjane, who had been out of the room, came back to itwith a look of awed solemnity, she said:

"Well, I never did! I thought as 'ow there was a' angel a-come into thisroom. "

"So there is, and here she is, " I said, beaming down on my sleepingchild. 

But the long, short, blissful day came to an end at last, and when nightfell and I dropped asleep, there were two names of my dear ones on mylips, and if one of them was the name of him who (as I thought) was inheaven, the other was the name of her who was now lying in my arms. 

I may have been poor, but I felt like a queen with all the riches oflife in my little room. 

I may have sinned against the world and the Church, but I felt as if Godhad justified me by His own triumphant law. 

The whole feminine soul in me seemed to swell and throb, and with mybaby at my breast I wanted no more of earth or heaven. 

I was still bleeding from the bruises of Fate, but I felt healed of allmy wounds, loaded with benefits, crowned with rewards. 

Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and myWelsh landlady. Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me. 

I did not care. In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed of mymotherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon. Indeed, I wasbeginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to having mybaby all to myself. 

But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to excuseherself. 

"If I hadn't promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn't leave you, moneyor no money, " she said. "But the girl" (meaning Emmerjane) "is alwayshere, and if she isn't like a nurse she's 'andy. "

"Yes, yes, I shall be all right, " I answered. 

On the fifth day my nurse left me, and shocking as that fact seems to menow, I thought little of it then. 

I was entirely happy. I had nothing in the world except my baby, and mybaby had nothing in the world except me. I was still in the dungeon thathad seemed so dreadful to me before--the great dungeon of London to onewho is poor and friendless. 

But no matter! I was no longer alone, for there was one more inmate inmy prison-house--my child. 

SIXTH PART

I AM LOST

_"Is it nothing to you, ye that pass by . . . ?"_

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

I hate to butt in where I may not be wanted, but if the remainder of mydarling's story is to be understood I must say what was happening in themeantime to me. 

God knows there was never a day on which I did not think of my dear oneat home, wondering what was happening to her, and whether a certain darkfact which always lay at the back of my mind as a possibility wasactually coming to pass. 

But she would be brave--I know that quite well--and I saw plainly that, if I had to get through the stiff job that was before me, I must put myshadowy fears away and think only of the dangers I was sure about. 

The first of these was that she might suppose our ship was lost, so assoon as we had set up on old Erebus the wooden lattice towers whichcontained our long-distance electric apparatus, I tried to send her thatfirst message from the Antarctic which was to say we had not beenshipwrecked. 

It was a thrilling moment. Exactly at the stroke of midnight on January21, while the midnight sun was shining with its dull sullen glow, thewhole of our company having gathered round, the wireless man prepared todespatch my message. 

As we were not sure of our machinery I had drawn up the words to suitany place into which they might fall if they missed their intendeddestination:

"South Pole Expedition safe. All well. Send greetings to dear ones athome. "

For some forty seconds the sparks crackled out their snappy signals intothe crisp night air, and then the settled calm returned, and we stood inbreathless silence like beings on the edge of a world waiting for theanswer to come as from another planet. 

It came. After a few minutes we heard from our magnetic detector thefaint sound of the S signals, and then we broke into a great cheer. Itwas not much, but it was enough; and while our scientific staff werecongratulating themselves that electric-wave telegraphy was notinhibited by long distance, or by the earth's curvature over an arc of agreat circle, I was thinking of my dear one--that one way or another mymessage would reach her and she would be relieved. 

Then in splendid health and spirits--dogs, ponies, and men all A1--westarted on our journey, making a bee-line for the Pole. 

Owing to the heavy weights we had to transport our progress was slow, much slower than we had expected; and though the going was fair and wekept a steady pace, travelling a good deal by night, it was not untilthe end of March that we reached Mount Darwin, which I had fixed on forthe second of our electric power stations. 

By this time winter was approaching, the nights were beginning to bedark and cold, and the altitude (8000 ft. ) was telling on some of us. 

Nevertheless our second installation got finished about the last week inApril, and again we gathered round (not quite such a hearty company asbefore) while the wireless man spoke to the operator we had left onErebus. 

Again the electrical radiations went crackling into space, and again wegave a cheer when the answer came back--all well and instruments inperfect order. 

Then, late as it was, we began on the last stage of our journey, whichwe knew would be a hard one. Three hundred geographical miles in front;temperature down to minus 40°; the sun several weeks gone, and nothingbefore us but thickening twilight, cold winds, snow, the rare aurora andthe frequent moon. 

But the worst fact was that our spirits were low, and do what I would tokeep a good heart and cheer up the splendid fellows who had come withme, I could not help feeling the deepening effect of that sunless gloom. 

In spite of this, I broke camp on April 25, and started straight as adie for the South. 

It was a stiff fight over the upper glacier in latitude 85, with itsrazor-shaped ice, full of snow-covered crevasses, and three days out twoof our best men fell into one of the worst of them. 

I saw the accident from a dozen yards away, and running up I lay on mystomach and shouted down, but it was a black bottomless gulf and not asound or a sign came back to me. 

This cast a still deeper gloom on our company, who could not be cheeredup, though I kept telling them we should be on the great plateau soon, please God, and then we should have a clear road to the Pole. 

We were not much better on top though, for the surface was much brokenup, and in that brewing place of the winds there seemed to be nothingbut surging seas of cumulus cloud and rolling waves of snow. 

The Polar march was telling on us badly. We were doing no more thanseven miles at a stretch. So to help my shipmates to keep up theirspirits (and perhaps to give a bit of a "heise" to my own) I had to singall day long--though my darling is right that I have no more voice thana corn-crake. 

Sometimes I sang "Ramsey Town, " because it did not want much music, butgenerally "Sally's the gel for me, " because it had a rattling chorus. The men all joined in (scientific experts included), and if the angelstook any heed of us, I think it must have touched them up to look downon our little company of puny men singing away as we trudged throughthat snowy wilderness which makes a man feel so small. 

But man can only do his best, and as Father Dan (God bless his oldheart!) used to say, the angels can do no more. We were making middlinghard work of it in the 88th parallel, with a temperature as low as 50degrees of frost, when a shrieking, blinding blizzard came sweeping downon us from the south. 

I thought it might blow itself out, but it didn't, so we struck camp ina broad half-circle, building igloos (snow huts) with their backs (likerain-beaten cattle) to the storm. 

There we lay nine days--and it is not worth while now to say how muchsome of our men suffered from frozen fingers, and more from fallingspirits. 

Sometimes I heard them saying (in voices that were intended to be loudenough for me to hear) it would have been better to have built winterquarters on the north of Darwin and settle there until the return ofsummer. And at other times I heard them counting the distance to thePole--a hundred geographical miles, making twenty days' march at thisseason, with the heavy weights we had to carry, and the dwindling of ourdogs and ponies, for we had killed a lot of them for food. 

But I would not give in, for I felt that to go back without finishing myjob would break my heart; and one day when old Treacle said, "No use, guv'nor, let's give it best, " I flew at him like a hunted tiger. 

All the same I was more than a bit down myself, for there were days whendeath was very near, and one night it really broke me up to hear a bigstrapping chap saying to the man who shared his two-man sack, "Ishouldn't care a whiff if it wasn't for the wife and the kiddies. "

God knows I had my own anchor at home, and sometimes it had a devil of atug at me. I fought myself hard, though, and at last in my desire to goon and my yearning to go back to my dear one, I made an awful proposal, such as a man does not much like to think of after a crisis is over. 

"Shipmates, " I said, "it isn't exactly my fault that we are here in themiddle of winter, but here we are, and we must make the best of it. I amgoing forward, and those who want to go with me can go. But those whodon't want to go can stay; and so that no one may have it on hisconscience that he has kept his comrades back, whether by weakness or bywill, I have told the doctor to serve out a dose of something to everyman, that he may end it whenever he wants to. "

To my surprise that awful proposal was joyfully received; and never solong as I live shall I forget the sight o' O'Sullivan going round thebroad circle of my shipmates in the blue gloom of that noonday twilightand handing something to every one of them, while nobody spoke, andDeath seemed to look us in the face. 

And now I come to the incident for which I have told this story. 

I could not get a wink of sleep that night for thinking of the bravefellows I had doomed to death by their own hands (for that was what itcame to), because their souls were starving and they were thinking ofhome. 

My soul was starving too, and whether it was the altitude (now 11, 000ft. ) that was getting into my head, and giving me that draught in thebrain which only travellers in frozen regions know, or the Power higherthan Nature which speaks to a man in great solitudes when life is low, Icannot say, but as God is my witness, I was hearing again the voices ofmy dear ones so far away. 

Sometimes they were the voices of my old people in Ellan, but morefrequently, and most importunately, it was Mary's voice, calling me bymy name, and crying to me for help as if she were in the shadow of somethreatening danger. 

"Martin! Martin! Martin!"

When this idea took clear possession of me--it was about three a. M. Andthe hurricane was yowling like a wounded dog--the answering thought camequick. I must go back. No matter at what cost or sacrifice--I must goback. 

It was in vain I reflected that the trouble which threatened my darling(whatever it was, and I thought I knew) might be all over before Ireached her side--I must go back. 

And even when I reminded myself that I was within twenty days' march ofthat last point of my journey which was to be the crown and completionof it all, I also remembered that my dear one was calling me, and I hadno choice but to obey. 

Next morning, in the first light of the dim Antarctic glow, I crept outof my snow hut to look south with powerful glasses in order to make surethat there was no reason why I should change my mind. 

There was none. Although the snow had ceased the blizzard was blowing ahundred miles an hour in cutting gusts, so with a bleeding heart (andyet a hot one) I told Treacle to call rip our company, and when theystood round me in the shelter of my hut I said:

"Shipmates, I have been thinking things over during the night, and I seethem differently now. Nature is stronger than man, and the nature thatis inside of us sometimes hits us harder than that which is without. Ithink it is that way with us here, and I believe there isn't a man ofyou who wouldn't go forward with me if he had nobody to think of excepthimself. . . . Well, perhaps _I_ have somebody to think of, too, sowe'll stick together, shipmates, and whatever regrets there may be, ordisappointments, or heart-breakings, we'll . . . We'll go back home. "

I think it says something for the mettle my men were made of that therewas never a cheer after I said that, for they could see what it cost meto say it. But by God, there was a shout when I added:

"We've drawn a blank this time, boys, but we'll draw a winner yet, and Iask you to swear that you'll come back with me next year, please God, tofinish the work we've begun. "

Then we gripped hands in that desolate place, and took our solemn oath, and God knows we meant to keep it. 

It did not take long to strike camp, I can tell you. The men werebustling about like boys and we had nothing to think of now but thepacking of the food and the harnessing of the dogs and ponies, for wewere leaving everything else behind us. 

At the last moment before we turned northward I planted the Union Jackon the highest hummock of snow, and when we were a hundred yards off Ilooked back through the gloom and saw it blowing stiffly in the wind. 

I don't think I need tell how deeply that sight cut me, but if life hasanother such moment coming for me all I have to say is that I hope I maydie before I live to see it--which is Irish, but most damnably true. 

That was twelve o'clock noon on the eighth day of June and anybody maymake what he likes of what I say, but as nearly as I can calculate thedifference of time between London and where we were in the 88th latitudeit was the very hour of my dear one's peril. 

M. C. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

EIGHTY-NINTH CHAPTER

Two weeks passed and if I suffered from getting up too soon I was neverconscious of it. 

Once or twice, perhaps, in the early days I felt a certain dizziness andhad to hold on for a moment to the iron rail of my bedstead, but I wastoo much occupied with the tender joys of motherhood to think much aboutmyself. 

Bathing, dressing, undressing, and feeding my baby were a perpetualdelight to me. 

What a joy it all was!

There must he something almost animal, even voluptuous, in mothers'love, for there was nothing I liked so much as having baby naked on myknee and devouring its sweet body all over with kisses--putting itslittle fat hands and even its little fat feet into my mouth. 

There must be something almost infantile, too, for sometimes after I hadtalked to my darling with a flood of joyous chatter I would even findmyself scolding her a little, and threatening what I would do if she didnot "behave. "

Oh, mysterious laws of motherhood! Only God can fathom the depths ofthem. 

It was just as if sixteen years of my life had rolled back, and I wasagain a child in my mother's room playing with my dolls under the table. Only there was something so wonderful now in the sweet eyes that lookedup at me, that at certain moments I would fall into a long reverie andmy heart would be full of adoration. 

What lengths I went to!

It was the height of the London season when baby came; and sometimes atnight, looking through my window, I saw the tail-end of the long queueof carriages and electric broughams which stretched to the end of thestreet I lived in, from the great houses fronting the Park where ballsand receptions were being held until the early hours of morning. But Inever envied the society ladies they were waiting for. On the contrary Ipitied them, remembering they were childless women for the most part andthinking their pleasures were hollow as death compared with mine. 

I pitied the rich mothers too--the mothers who banish their babies tonurseries to be cared for by servants, and I thought how much moreblessed was the condition of poor mothers like myself who kept all thatsweetness to themselves. 

How happy I was! No woman coming into a fortune was ever so happy. Isang all day long. Sometimes it was the sacred music of the convent inwhich each note, with its own glory of sound, wraps one's heart round aswith a rainbow, but more frequently it was "Ramsey Town" or "Sally's thegel for me, " which were only noisy nonsense but dear to me by suchdelicious memories. 

My neighbours would come to their doors to listen, and when I hadstopped I would hear them say:

"Our lady is a 'appy 'cart, isn't she?"

I suppose it was because I was so happy that my looks returned to me, though I did not know it was so until one morning, after standing amoment at the window, I heard somebody say:

"Our lady seems to be prettier than ever now her baby has come. "

I should not have been a woman if I could have resisted that, so I ranto the glass to see if it was true, and it was. 

The ugly lines that used to be in my cheeks had gone, my hair hadregained its blue-black lustre, and my eyes had suddenly become brightlike a darkened room when the shutters are opened and the sunshinestreams into it. 

But the coming of baby did better for me than that. It brought me backto God, before whom I now felt so humble and so glad, because he hadtransformed the world for me. 

Every Catholic will know why I could not ask for the benediction of theChurch after childbirth; but he will also know why I was in a fever ofanxiety to have my baby baptized at the earliest possible moment. It wasnot that I feared her death (I never thought of that in those days), butbecause I lived in dread of the dangers which had darkened my thoughtsbefore she was born. 

So when baby was nearly a fortnight old I wrote to the Rector of aneighbouring Catholic Church asking when I might bring her to bebaptized, and he sent me a printed reply, giving the day and hour, andenclosing a card to be filled up with her name and all otherparticulars. 

What a day of joy and rapture was that of my baby's baptism! I was upwith the sun on the morning appointed to take her to church and spenthours and hours in dressing her. 

How lovely she looked when I had finished! I thought she was thesweetest thing in the world, sweeter than a rosebud under its sparklingweb of dew when the rising sun is glistening on it. 

After I had put on all the pretty clothes I had prepared for her beforeshe was born--the christening robe and the pelisse and the knittedbonnet with its pink ribbons and the light woollen veil--I lifted her upto the glass to look at herself, being such a child myself and sowildly, foolishly happy. 

"That old Rector won't see anything equal to her _this_ summer morninganyway, " I thought. 

And then the journey to church!

I have heard that unmarried mothers, going out for the first time aftertheir confinement, feel ashamed and confused, as if every passer-by mustknow their shameful secret. I was a kind of unmarried mother myself, Godhelp me, but I had no such feeling. Indeed I felt proud and gay, andwhen I sailed out with my baby in my arms I thought all the people inour street were looking at me, and I am sure I wanted to say "Goodmorning" to everybody I met on my way. 

The church was not in a joyous quarter. It stood on the edge of a poorand very populous district, with a flaunting public-house immediatelyopposite. When I got to it I found a number of other mothers (allworking women), with their babies and the godfathers and godmothers theyhad provided for them, waiting at the door. 

At this sight I felt very stupid, for I had been thinking so much aboutother things (some of them vain enough perhaps) that I had forgotten thenecessity for sponsors; and I do not know what I should have done atthat last moment if the sacristan had not come to my relief--finding metwo old people who, for a fee of a shilling each, were willing to standgodmother and godfather to my darling. 

Then the priest came out of the church in his white surplice and stole, and we all gathered in the porch for the preliminary part of thesacrament. 

What an experience it was! Never since my marriage had I been in a stateof such spiritual exaltation. 

The sacristan, showing me some preference, had put me in the middle ofthe row, immediately in front of the priest, so what happened to theother children I do not know, having eyes and ears for nothing but thebaptism of my own baby. 

There were some mistakes, but they did not trouble me, although one wasa little important. 

When the priest said, "What name give you this child?" I handed theRector's card to the sacristan, and whispered "Isabel Mary" to thegodmother, but the next thing I heard was:

"Mary Isabel, what dost thou ask of the Church of God?"

But what did it matter? Nothing mattered except one thing--that mydarling should be saved by the power of the Holy Sacrament from the darkterrors which threatened her. 

Oh, it is a fearful and awful thing, the baptism of a child, if youreally and truly believe in it. And I did--from the bottom of my heartand soul I believed in it and trusted it. 

In my sacred joy I must have cried nearly all the time, for I had takenbaby's bonnet off, I remember, and holding it to my mouth I found aftera while that I was wetting it with my tears. 

When the exorcisms were over, the priest laid the end of his stole overbaby's shoulder and led her (as our prayer books say) into the church, and we all followed to the baptistery, where I knelt immediately infront of the font, with the old godmother before me, the other motherson either side, and a group of whispering children behind. 

The church was empty, save for two charwomen who were sweeping the floorof the nave somewhere up by the dark and silent altar; and when thesacristan closed the outer door there was a solemn hush, which wasbroken only by the priest's voice and the godparents' mutteredresponses. 

"Mary Isabel, dost thou renounce Satan?"

"I do renounce him. "

"And all his works?"

"I do renounce them. "

"And all his pomps?"

"I do renounce them. "

The actual baptism was like a prayer to me. I am sure my whole soul wentout to it. And though I may have been a sinful woman unworthy to bechurched, I know, and God knows, that no chaste and holy nun ever prayedwith a purer heart than I did then, kneeling there with my baby's bonnetto my mouth. 

"Mary Isabel, I baptize thee in the name of the Father + and of the Son+ and of the Holy Ghost. +"

Except that baby cried a little when the water was poured on her head(as she had cried when the salt was put on her tongue), I knew no moreafter that until I saw the candle in the godfather's hand (whichsignified that my child had been made a Child of Light) and heard thepriest say:

"Go in peace and the Lord be with thee. "

Then I awoke as from a trance. There was a shuffling of feet. The priestwas going away. The solemn rite was at an end. 

I rose from my knees, put a little money in the plate which thesacristan held out to me, gave a shilling to each of the two oldsponsors, took baby back into my arms, and sat down in a pew to put onher bonnet and veil. 

The spiritual exaltation which had sustained me lasted until I reachedthe street where the other mothers and their friends were laughing andjoking, in voices that had to be pitched high over the rattle of thetraffic, about going to the house opposite to "wet the baby's head. "

But I think something of the celestial light of the sacrament must havebeen on my face still when I reached home, for I remember that as Iknocked at the door, and waited for the rope from the kitchen to openit, I heard one of my neighbours say:

"Our lady has taken a new lease of life, hasn't she?"

I thought I had--a great new lease of physical and spiritual life. 

But how little did I know what Fate had in store for me!

NINETIETH CHAPTER

I was taking off baby's outdoor things when my Welsh landlady came up toask how I had got on, and after I had told her she said:

And now thee'st got to get the jewel registered. "

"Registered?"

"Within three weeks. It's the law, look you. "

That was the first thing that frightened me. I had filled up truthfullyenough the card which the Rector had sent me, because I knew that theregister of my Church must be as sacred as its confessional. 

But a public declaration of my baby's birth and parentage seemed to bequite another matter--charged with all the dangers to me, to Martin, andabove all to my child, which had overshadowed my life before she wasborn. 

More than once I felt tempted to lie, to make a false declaration, tosay that Martin had been my husband and Isabel was my legitimate child. 

But at length I resolved to speak the truth, the plain truth, tellingmyself that God's law was above man's law, and I had no right to beashamed. 

In this mood I set off for the Registry Office. It was a long way fromwhere I lived, and carrying baby in my arms I was tired when I gotthere. 

I found it to be a kind of private house, with an open vestibule and ablack-and-white enamelled plate on the door-post, saying "Registry ofBirths and Deaths. "

In the front parlour (which reminded me of Mr. Curphy's office inHolmtown) there was a counter by the door and a large table covered withpapers in the space within. 

Two men sat at this table, an old one and a young one, and I rememberthat I thought the old one must have been reading aloud from a newspaperwhich he held open in his hand, for as I entered the young one wassaying:

"Extraordinary! Perfectly extraordinary! And everybody thought they werelost, too!"

In the space between the door and the counter two women were waiting. Both were poor and obviously agitated. One had a baby in her arms, andwhen it whimpered for its food she unbuttoned her dress and fed itopenly. The other woman, whose eyes were red as if she had been crying, wore a coloured straw hat over which, in a pitiful effort to assumeblack, she had stretched a pennyworth of cheap crêpe. 

In his own good time the young man got up to attend to them. He was avery ordinary young clerk in a check suit, looking frankly bored by thedull routine of his daily labour, and palpably unconscious of the factthat every day and hour of his life he was standing on the verge of thestormiest places of the soul. 

Opening one of two registers which lay on the counter (the Register ofBirths) he turned first to the woman with the child. Her baby, a boy, was illegitimate, and in her nervousness she stumbled and stammered, andhe corrected her sharply. 

Then opening the other register (the Register of Deaths) he attended tothe woman in the crêpe. She had lost her little girl, two years old, andproduced a doctor's certificate. While she gave the particulars she helda soiled handkerchief to her mouth as if to suppress a sob, but theyoung clerk's composure remained undisturbed. 

I do not know if it was the agitation of the two poor women that made menervous, but when they were gone and my turn had come, I was hot andtrembling. 

The young clerk, however, who was now looking at me for the first time, had suddenly become respectful. With a bow and a smile he asked me if Iwished to register my child, and when I answered yes he asked me to begood enough to step up to the counter. 

"And what is your baby's name, please?" he asked. 

I told him. He dipped his pen in his metal ink-pot, shook some dropsback, made various imaginary flourishes over his book and wrote:

"Mary Isabel. "

"And now, " he said, with another smile, "the full name, profession, andplace of residence of the father. "

I hesitated for a moment, and then, making a call on my resolution, Isaid:

"Martin Conrad, seaman, deceased. "

The young clerk looked up quickly. 

"Did you say Martin Conrad, ma'am?" he asked, and as well as I could fora click in my throat I answered:

"Yes. "

He paused as if thinking; then with the same flourish as before he wrotethat name also, and after he had done so, he twisted his face about tothe old man, who was sitting behind him, and said, in a voice that wasnot meant to reach me:

"Extraordinary coincidence, isn't it?"

"Extraordinary!" said the old man, who had lowered his newspaper and waslooking across at me over the rims of his spectacles. 

"And now, " said the young clerk, "your own name and your maiden name ifyou please. "

"Mary O'Neill. "

The young clerk looked up at me again. I was holding baby on my left armand I could see that his eye caught my wedding ring. 

"Mary Conrad, maiden name O'Neill, I presume?" he said. 

I hesitated once more. The old temptation was surging back upon me. Butmaking a great pull on my determination to tell the truth (or what Ibelieved to be the truth) I answered:

"No, Mary O'Neill simply. "

"Ah!" said the young clerk, and I thought his manner changed instantly. 

There was silence for some minutes while the young clerk filled up hisform and made the copy I was to carry away. 

I heard the scratching of the young clerk's pen, the crinkling of theold man's newspaper, the hollow ticking of a round clock on the wall, the dull hum of the traffic in the streets, and the thud-thud-thuddingin my own bosom. 

Then the entry was read out to me and I was asked to sign it. 

"Sign here, please, " said the young clerk in quite a different tone, pointing to a vacant line at the bottom of the hook, and I signed with atrembling hand and a feeling of only partial consciousness. 

I hardly know what happened after that until I was standing in the openvestibule, settling baby on my arm afresh for my return journey, andtelling myself that I had laid a stigma upon my child which would remainwith her as long as she lived. 

It was a long, long way back, I remember, and when I reached home(having looked neither to the right nor left, nor at anything oranybody, though I felt as if everybody had been looking at me) I had asense of dimness of sight and of aching in the eyeballs. 

I did not sing very much that day, and I thought baby was ratherrestless. 

Towards nightfall I had a startling experience. 

I was preparing Isabel for bed, when I saw a red flush, like a rash, down the left side of her face. 

At first I thought it would pass away, but when it did not I called myWelsh landlady upstairs to look at it. 

"Do you see something like a stain on baby's face?" I asked, and thenwaited breathlessly for her answer. 

"No . . . Yes . . . Well, " she said, "now that thee'st saying so . . . Perhaps it's a birthmark. "

"A birthmark?"

"Did'st strike thy face against anything when baby was coming?"

I made some kind of reply, I hardly know what, but the truth, or what Ithought to be the truth, flashed on me in a moment. 

Remembering my last night at Castle Raa, and the violent scene which hadoccurred there, I told myself that the flush on baby's face was the markof my husband's hand which, making no impression upon me, had beenpassed on to my child, and would remain with her to the end of her life, as the brand of her mother's shame and the sign of what had been calledher bastardy. 

How I suffered at the sight of it! How time after time that night Ileaned over my sleeping child to see if the mark had passed away! Howagain and again I knelt by her side to pray that if sin of mine had tobe punished the punishment might fall on me and not on my innocent babe!

At last I remembered baby's baptism and told myself that if it meantanything it meant that the sin in which my child had been born, the sinof those who had gone before her (if sin it was), had been cast out ofher soul with the evil spirits which had inspired them. 

"_This sign of the Holy Cross + which we make upon her forehead dothou, accursed devil, never dare to violate_. "

God's law had washed my darling white! What could man's law--his proudbut puny morality--do to injure her? It could do nothing!

That comforted me. When I looked at baby again the flush had gone and Iwent to bed quite happy. 

NINETY-FIRST CHAPTER

I think it must have been the morning of the next day when the nurse whohad attended me in my confinement came to see how I was going along. 

I told her of the dimness of my sight and the aching of my eyeballs, whereupon she held up her hands and cried:

"There now! What did I tell you? Didn't I say it is _after_ a lady feelsit?"

The moral of her prediction was that, being in a delicate state ofhealth, and having "let myself low" before baby was born, it was my dutyto wean her immediately. 

I could not do it. 

Although the nurse's advice was supported by my Welsh landlady (withvarious prognostications of consumption and rickets), I could not atfirst deny myself the wild joy of nursing my baby. 

But a severer monitor soon came to say that I must. I found that mymoney was now reduced to little more than two pounds, and that I wasconfronted by the necessity (which I had so long put off) of looking foremployment. 

I could not look for employment until I had found a nurse for my child, and I could not find a nurse until my baby could do without me, so whenIsabel was three weeks old I began to wean her. 

At first I contented myself with the hours of night, keeping afeeding-bottle in bed, with the cow's milk warmed to the heat of my ownbody. But when baby cried for the breast during the day I could not findit in my heart to deny her. 

That made the time of weaning somewhat longer than it should have been, but I compromised with my conscience by reducing still further my meagreexpenses. 

Must I tell how I did so?

Although it was the month of July there was a snap of cold weather suchas sometimes comes in the middle of our English summer, and yet I gaveup having a fire in my room, and for the cooking of my food I bought asmall spirit stove which cost me a shilling. 

This tempted me to conduct which has since had consequences, and I amhalf ashamed and half afraid to speak of it. My baby linen being littleI had to wash it frequently, and having no fire I . . . Dried it on myown body. 

Oh, I see now it was reckless foolishness, almost wilful madness, but Ithought nothing of it then. I was poor and perhaps I was proud, and Icould not afford a fire. And then a mother's love is as deep as the sea, and there was nothing in the wide world I would not have done to keep mydarling a little longer beside me. 

Baby being weaned at last I had next to think of a nurse, and that was astill more painful ordeal. To give my child to another woman, who was tobe the same as a second mother to her, was almost more than I could bearto think about. 

I _had_ to think of it. But I could only do so by telling myself that, when I put baby out to nurse, I might arrange to see her every morningand evening and as often as my employment permitted. 

This idea partly reconciled me to my sacrifice, and I was in the act ofdrawing up a newspaper advertisement in these terms when my landladycame to say that the nurse knew of somebody who would suit me exactly. 

Nurse called the same evening and told me a long story about her friend. 

She was a Mrs. Oliver, and she lived at Ilford, which was at the otherend of London and quite on the edge of the country. The poor woman, whowas not too happily married, had lost a child of her own lately, and wasnow very lonely, being devoted to children. 

This pleased me extremely, especially (God forgive me!), the fact thatMrs. Oliver was a bereaved mother and lived on the edge of the country. 

Already in my mind's eye I saw her sitting on sunny days under a tree(perhaps in an orchard) with Isabel in her arms, rocking her gently andsinging to her softly, and almost forgetting that she was not her ownbaby whom she had lost . . . Though that was a two-edged sword which cutme both ways, being a sort of wild joy with tears lurking behind it. 

So I took a note of Mrs. Oliver's address (10 Lennard's Row, Lennard'sGreen, Ilford) and wrote to her the same night, asking her terms andstating my own conditions. 

A reply came the following day. It was a badly-written and misspeltletter, which showed me that Mrs. Oliver must be a working woman(perhaps the wife of a gardener or farm-labourer, I thought), thoughthat did not trouble me in the least, knowing by this time how poorpeople loved their children. 

 _"The terms is fore shillins a weke, " she wrote, "but i am that lonelie sins my own littel one lef me i wood tike your swete darling for nothin if I cud afford it and you can cum to see her as offen as you pleas_. "

In my ignorance and simplicity this captured me completely, so I repliedat once saying I would take baby to Ilford the next day. 

I did all this in a rush, but when it came to the last moment I couldscarcely part with my letter, and I remember that I passed threepillar-boxes in the front street before I could bring myself to post it. 

I suppose my eyes must have been red when I returned home, for my Welshlandlady (whom I had taken into my confidence about my means) took me totask for crying, telling me that I ought to thank God for what hadhappened, which was like a message from heaven, look you, and adispensation of Providence. 

I tried to see things in that light, though it was difficult to do so, for the darker my prospects grew the more radiant shone the light of thelittle angel by whose life I lived, and the harder it seemed to livewithout her. 

"But it isn't like losing my child altogether, is it?" I said. 

"'Deed no, and 'twill he better for both of you, " said my landlady. 

"Although Ilford is a long way off I can go there every day, can't I'!"

"'Deed thee can, if thee'st not minding a journey of nine miles ormore. "

"And if I can get a good situation and earn a little money I may be ableto have baby back and hire somebody to nurse her, and so keep her all tomyself. "

"And why shouldn't thee?" said my Welsh landlady. "Thee reading printlike the young minister and writing letters like a copybook!"

So in the fierce bravery of motherly love I dried my eyes and forcedback my sobs, and began to pack up my baby's clothes, and to persuademyself that I was still quite happy. 

My purse was very low by this time. After paying my rent and some otherexpenses I had only one pound and a few shillings left. 

NINETY-SECOND CHAPTER

At half past seven next morning I was ready to start on my journey. 

I took a hasty glance at myself in the glass before going out, and Ithought my eyes were too much like the sky at daybreak--all joyful beamswith a veil of mist in front of them. 

But I made myself believe that never since baby was born had I been sohappy. I was sure I was doing the best for her. I was also sure I wasdoing the best for myself, for what could be so sweet to a mother asproviding for her child?

My Welsh landlady had told me it was nine miles to Ilford, and I hadgathered that I could ride all the way in successive omnibuses for lessthan a shilling. But shillings were scarce with me then, so I determinedto walk all the way. 

Emmerjane, by her own urgent entreaty, carried baby as far as the cornerof the Bayswater Road, and there the premature little woman left me, after nearly smothering baby with kisses. 

"Keep straight as a' arrow and you can't lose your wye, " she said. 

It was one of those beautiful mornings in late July when the air isfresh and the sun is soft, and the summer, even in London, has not yethad time to grow tired and dusty. 

I felt as light as the air itself. I had put baby's feeding-bottle in mypocket and hung her surplus linen in a parcel about my wrist, so I hadnothing to carry in my arms except baby herself, and at first I did notfeel her weight. 

There were not many people in the West-End streets at that early hour, yet a few were riding in the Park, and when I came to the large housesin Lancaster Gate I saw that though the sun was shining on the windowsmost of the blinds were down. 

I must have been walking slowly, for it was half past eight when Ireached the Marble Arch. There I encountered the first cross-tide oftraffic, but somebody, seeing baby, took me by the arm and led me safelyover. 

The great "Mediterranean of Oxford Street" was by this time running atfull tide. People were pouring out of the Tube and Underground stationsand clambering on to the motor-buses. But in the rush nobody hustled orjostled me. A woman with a child in her arms was like a queen--everybodymade way for her. 

Once or twice I stopped to look at the shops. Some of the dressmakers'windows were full of beautiful costumes. I did not covet any of them. Iremembered the costly ones I had bought in Cairo and how littlehappiness they had brought me. And then I felt as if the wealth of theworld were in my arms. 

Nevertheless the whole feminine soul in me awoke when I came upon a shopfor the sale of babies' clothes. Already I foresaw a time when baby, dressed in pretty things like these, would be running about Lennard'sGreen and plucking up the flowers in Mrs. Oliver's garden. 

The great street was very long and I thought it would never end. But Ithink I must have been still fresh and happy while we passed through theforeign quarter of Soho, for I remember that, when two young Italianwaiters, standing at the door of their café, asked each other in theirown language which of us (baby or I) was "the bambino, " I turned to themand smiled. 

Before I came to Chancery Lane, however, baby began to cry for her food, and I was glad to slip down a narrow alley into Lincoln's Inn Fields andsit on a seat in the garden while I gave her the bottle. It was then teno'clock, the sun was high and the day was becoming hot. 

The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of thestreets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when Iresumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but beforeI reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was beginning to gain on me. 

I saw that I must be approaching some great hospital, for hospitalnurses were now passing me constantly, and one of them, who was going myway, stepped up and asked me to allow her to carry baby. She looked sosweet and motherly that I let her do so, and as we walked along wetalked. 

She asked me if I was going far, and I said no, only to the other end ofLondon, the edge of the country, to Ilford. 

"Ilford!" she cried. "Why, that's miles and miles away. You'll have to'bus it to Aldgate, then change for Bow, and then tram it throughStratford Market. "

I told her I preferred to walk, being such a good walker, and she gaveme a searching look, but said no more on that subject. 

Then she asked me how old baby was and whether I was nursing her myself, and I answered that baby was six weeks and I had been forced to weanher, being supposed to be delicate, and besides . . . 

"Ah, perhaps you are putting her out to nurse, " she said, and I answeredyes, and that was the reason I was going to Ilford. 

"I see, " she said, with another searching look, and then it flashed uponme that she had formed her own conclusions about what had befallen me. 

When we came to a great building in a side street on the left, withambulance vans passing in and out of a wide gateway, she said she wassorry she could not carry baby any further, because she was due in thehospital, where the house-doctor would be waiting for her. 

"But I hope baby's nurse will be a good one. They're not always that, you know. "

I was not quite so happy when the hospital nurse left me. The parcel onmy wrist was feeling heavier than before, and my feet were beginning todrag. But I tried to keep a good heart as I faced the crowdedthoroughfares--Newgate with its cruel old prison, the edge of St. Paul's, and the corner of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and so on intoCheapside. 

Cheapside itself was almost impassable. Merchants, brokers, clerks, andcity men generally in tall silk hats were hurrying and sometimes runningalong the pavement, making me think of the river by my father's house, whose myriad little waves seemed to my fancy as a child to be alwaysstruggling to find out which could get to Murphy's Mouth the first andso drown itself in the sea. 

People were still very kind to me, though, and if anybody brushed me inpassing he raised his hat; and if any one pushed me accidentally hestopped to say he was sorry. 

Of course baby was the talisman that protected me from harm; and what Ishould have done without her when I got to the Mansion house I do notknow, for that seemed to be the central heart of all the London traffic, with its motor-buses and taxi-cabs going in different directions and itstremendous tides of human life flowing every way. 

But just as I was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a triangleof streets, looking up at a great building that was like a rock on theedge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling inscription, "The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, " a big policeman, seeing me with baby in my arms, held up his hand to the drivers andshouted to the pedestrians ("Stand a-one side, please"), and then led mesafely across, as if the Red Sea had parted to let us pass. 

It was then twelve o'clock and baby was once more crying for her food, so I looked for a place in which I might rest while I gave her thebottle again. 

Suddenly I came upon what I wanted. It seemed to be a garden, but it wasa graveyard--one of the graveyards of the old London churches, enclosedby high buildings now, and overlooked by office windows. 

Such a restful place, so green, so calm, so beautiful! Lying there inthe midst of the tumultuous London traffic, it reminded me of one of thelittle islands in the middle of our Ellan glens, on which the fuchsiaand wild rose grow while the river rolls and boils about it. 

I had just sat down on a seat that had been built about a gnarled andblackened old tree, and was giving baby her food, when I saw that ayoung girl was sitting beside me. 

She was about nineteen years of age, and was eating scones out of aconfectioner's bag, while she read a paper-covered novel. Presently shelooked at baby with her little eyes, which were like a pair of shinyboot buttons, and said:

"That your child?"

I answered her, and then she asked:

"Do you like children?"

I answered her again, and asked her if she did not like them also. 

"Can't say I'm particularly gone on them, " she said, whereupon I repliedthat that was probably because she had not yet had much experience. 

"Oh, haven't I? Perhaps I haven't, " she said, and then with a hardlittle laugh, she added "Mother's had nine though. "

I asked if she was a shop assistant, and with a toss of her head shetold me she was a typist. 

"Better screw and your evenings off, " she said, and then she returned tothe subject of children. 

One of her chums in the office who used to go out with her every nightto the music-halls got into trouble a year or two ago. As a consequenceshe had to marry. And what was the result? Never had her nose out of thewash-tub now!

The story was crude enough, yet it touched me closely. 

"But couldn't she have put her baby out to nurse and get anothersituation somewhere?" I asked. 

"Matter o' luck, " said the girl. "Some can. Some can't. That's theirlook out. Firms don't like it. If they find you've got a child theygen'r'lly chuck you. "

In spite of myself I was a little down when I started on my journeyagain. I thought the parcel was cutting my wrist and I felt my feetgrowing heavier at every step. 

Was Maggie Jones's story the universal one?

If a child were born beyond the legal limits, was it a thing to hideaway and be ashamed of?

And could it be possible that man's law was stronger than God's lawafter all?

NINETY-THIRD CHAPTER

I had walked so slowly and stopped so often that it was two o'clock inthe afternoon when I passed through Aldgate. 

I was then faint for want of food, so I looked out for a tea-shop orrestaurant. 

I passed several such places before I found the modest house I wanted. Then I stepped into it rather nervously and took the seat nearest thedoor. 

It was an oblong room with red plush seats along the walls behind a lineof marble-topped tables. The customers were all men, chiefly clerks andwarehousemen, I thought, and the attendants were girls in black frocksand white aprons. 

There seemed to be a constant fire of free-and-easy flirtation going onbetween them. At one table a man in a cloth cap was saying to the girlwho had served him:

"What's the damage, dearie?"

"One roast, one veg, two breads--'levenpence, and no liberties, mister. "

"Sunday off, Em'ly?" said a youth in a red tie at another table, andbeing told it was, he said:

"Then what do you say to 'oppin' up to 'Endon and 'aving a day in aboat?"

I had to wait some time before anybody came to attend to me, but atlength a girl from the other end of the room, who had taken no part inthese amatory exchanges, stepped up and asked what I wanted. 

I ordered a glass of cold milk and a scone for myself and a pint of hotmilk to replenish baby's bottle. 

The girl served me immediately, and after rinsing and refilling thefeeding-bottle she stood near while the baby used it. 

She had quiet eyes and that indefinable expression of yearningtenderness which we sometimes see in the eyes of a dear old maid who hasmissed her motherhood. 

The shop had been clearing rapidly; and as soon as the men were gone, and while the other girls were sitting in corners to read pennynovelettes, my waitress leaned over and asked me if I did not wish to gointo the private room to attend to baby. 

A moment afterwards I followed her into a small apartment at the end ofthe shop, and there a curious thing occurred. 

She closed the door behind us and asked me in an eager whisper to allowher to see to baby. 

I tried to excuse myself, but she whispered:

"Hush! I have a baby of my own, though they know nothing about it here, so you can safely trust me. "

I did so, and it was beautiful to see the joy she had in doing what waswanted, saying all sorts of sweet and gentle things to my baby (though Iknew they were meant for her own), as if the starved mother-heart in herwere stealing a moment of maternal tenderness. 

"There!" she said, "She'll be comfortable now, bless her!"

I asked about her own child, and, coming close and speaking in awhisper, she told me all about it. 

It was a girl and it would be a year old at Christmas. At first she hadput it out to nurse in town, where she could see it every evening, butthe foster-mother had neglected it, and the inspector had complained, soshe had been compelled to take it away. Now it was in a Home in thecountry, ten miles from Liverpool Street, and it was as bonny as a peachand as happy as the day is long. 

"See, " she whispered, taking a card from her breast, after a furtiveglance towards the door. "I sent two shillings to have her photographtaken and the Matron has just sent it. "

It was the picture of a beautiful baby girl, and I found it easy topraise her. 

"I suppose you see her constantly, don't you?" I said. 

The girl's face dropped. 

"Only on visiting days, once a month, and not always that, " sheanswered. 

"But how can you live without seeing her oftener?" I asked. 

"Matter o' means, " she said sadly. "I pay five shillings a week for herboard, and the train is one-and-eight return, so I have to be careful, you see, and if I lost my place what would happen to baby?"

I was very low and tired and down when I resumed my walk. But when Ithought for a moment of taking omnibuses for the rest of my journey Iremembered the waitress's story and told myself that the little I hadbelonged to my child, and so I struggled on. 

But what a weary march it was during the next two hours! I was in theEast End now, and remembering the splendour of the West, I couldscarcely believe I was still in London. 

Long, mean, monotonous streets, running off to right and left, miles onmiles of them without form or feature, or any trace of nature except theblue strips of sky overhead. 

Such multitudes of people, often badly dressed and generally with setand anxious faces, hasting to and fro, hustling, elbowing, jostling eachother along, as if driven by some invisible power that was swinging anunseen scourge. 

No gracious courtesy here! A woman with a child in her arms was nolonger a queen. Children were cheap, and sometimes it was as much as Icould do to save myself from being pushed off the pavement. 

The air seemed to smell of nothing but ale and coarse tobacco. And thenthe noise! The ceaseless clatter of carts, the clang of electric cars, the piercing shrieks of the Underground Railway coming at intervals outof the bowels of the earth like explosions out of a volcano, and, aboveall, the raucous, rasping, high-pitched voices of the people, oftenfoul-mouthed, sometimes profane, too frequently obscene. 

A cold, grey, joyless, outcast city, cut off from the rest of London byan invisible barrier more formidable than a wall; a city in which theinhabitants seemed to live cold, grey, joyless lives, all the same thatthey joked and laughed; a city under perpetual siege, the siege ofPoverty, in the constant throes of civil war, the War of Want, the dailyand hourly fight for food. 

If there were other parts of the East End (and I am sure there must be)where people live simple, natural, human lives, I did not see them thatday, for my course was down the principal thoroughfares only. 

Those thoroughfares, telescoping each other, one after another, seemedas if they would never come to an end. 

How tired I was! Even baby was no longer light, and the parcel on mywrist had become as heavy as lead. 

Towards four o'clock I came to a broad parapet which had strips ofgarden enclosed by railings and iron seats in front of them. Utterlyexhausted, my arms aching and my legs limp, I sank into one of theseseats, feeling that I could walk no farther. 

But after a while I felt better, and then I became aware that anotherwoman was sitting beside me. 

When I looked at her first I thought I had never in my life seenanything so repulsive. She was asleep, and having that expressionlesslook which sleep gives, I found it impossible to know whether she wasyoung or old. She was not merely coarse, she was gross. The womanhood inher seemed to be effaced, and I thought she was utterly brutalised anddegraded. 

Presently baby, who had also been asleep, awoke and cried, and then thewoman opened her eyes and looked at the child, while I hushed her tosleep again. 

There must be something in a baby's face that has a miraculous effect onevery woman (as if these sweet angels, fresh from God, make us all youngand all beautiful), and it was even so at that moment. 

Never shall I forget the transfiguration in the woman's face when shelooked into the face of my baby. The expression of brutality anddegradation disappeared, and through the bleared eyes and over thecoarsened features there came the light of an almost celestial smile. 

After a while the woman spoke to me. She spoke in a husky voice whichseemed to be compounded of the effects of rum and raw night air. 

"That your'n, " she said. 

I answered her. 

"Boy or gel?"

I told her. 

"'Ow old?"

I told her that too. 

The woman was silent for a moment, and then, with a thickening of thehusky voice, she said:

"S'pose you'll say I'm a bleedin' liar, but I 'ad a kid as putty as thatonct--puttier. It was a boy. The nobbiest little b---- as you ever comeacrost. Your'n is putty, but it ain't in it with my Billie, not by along chalk. "

I asked her what had become of her child. 

"Lawst 'im, " she said. "Used to give sixpence a week to the woman what'ad 'alf the 'ouse with me to look after 'im while I was workin' at thefact'ry. But what did the bleedin' b---- do? Blimey, if she didn't let'im get run over by the dray from the brewery. "

"Killed?" I said, clutching at baby. 

The woman nodded without speaking. 

I asked her how old her child had been. 

"More'n four, " she said. "Just old enough to run a arrand. It was crool. Hit me out, I can tell you. That kid was all I had. Apple o' my eye, ina manner of speakin'. When it was gone there wasn't much encouragement, was there? The Favver from the Mission came jawin' as 'ow Jesus 'adtaken 'im to 'Imself. Rot! When they put 'im down in old Bow I didn'tcare no more for nothin'. Monse and monse I walked about night and day, and the bleedin' coppers was allus on to me. They got their own way atlast. I took the pneumonier and was laid up at the London. And when Igot out I didn't go back to the fact'ry neither. "

"What did you do?" I asked. 

The woman laughed--bitterly, terribly. 

"Do? Don't you _know_?"

I shook my head. The woman looked hard at me, and then at the child. 

"Look here--are you a good gel?" she said. 

Hardly knowing what she meant I answered that I hoped so

"'Ope? Don't you know _that_ neither?"

Then I caught her meaning, and answered faintly:

"Yes. "

She looked searchingly into my eyes and said:

"I b'lieve you. Some gels is. S'elp me Gawd I don't know how they doneit, though. "

I was shuddering and trembling, for I was catching glimpses, as if bybroken lights from hell, of the life behind--the wrecked hope, theshattered faith, the human being hunted like a beast and at last turnedinto one. 

Just at that moment baby awoke and cried again. The woman looked at herwith the same look as before--not so much a smile as a sort of haggardradiance. 

Then leaning over me she blew puffs of alcoholic breath into baby'sface, and stretching out a coarse fat finger she tickled her under thechin. 

Baby ceased to cry and began to smile. Seeing this the woman's eyessparkled like sunshine. 

"See that, " she cried. "S'elp me Jesus, I b'lieve I could 'ave been goodmeself if I'd on'y 'ad somethink like this to keer for. "

I am not ashamed to say that more than once there had been tears in myeyes while the woman spoke, though her blasphemies had corrupted the airlike the gases that rise from a dust-heap. But when she touched my childI shuddered as if something out of the 'lowest depths had tainted her. 

Then a strange thing happened. 

I had risen to go, although my limbs could scarcely support me, and wasfolding my little angel closely in my arms, when the woman rose too andsaid:

"You wouldn't let me carry your kiddie a bit, would you?"

I tried to excuse myself, saying something, I know not what The womanlooked at me again, and after a moment she said:

"S'pose not. On'y I thought it might make me think as 'ow I was carryin'Billie. "

That swept down everything. 

The one remaining window of the woman's soul was open and I dared notclose it. 

I looked down at my child--so pure, so sweet, so stainless; I looked upat the woman--so foul, so gross, so degraded. 

There was a moment of awful struggle and then . . . The woman and I werewalking side by side. 

And the harlot was carrying my baby down the street. 

NINETY-FOURTH CHAPTER

At five o'clock I was once more alone. 

I was then standing (with baby in my own arms now) under the statuewhich is at the back of Bow Church. 

I thought I could walk no farther, and although every penny I had in mypocket belonged to Isabel (being all that yet stood between her andwant) I must borrow a little of it if she was to reach Mrs. Oliver'sthat night. 

I waited for the first tram that was going in my direction, and when itcame up I signalled to it, but it did not stop--it was full. 

I waited for a second tram, but that was still more crowded. 

I reproached myself for having come so far. I told myself howill-advised I had been in seeking for a nurse for my child at thefarthest end of the city. I reminded myself that I could not hope tovisit her every day if my employment was to be in the West, as I hadalways thought it would be. I asked myself if in all this vast London, with its myriads of homes, there had been no house nearer that couldhave sheltered my child. 

Against all this I had to set something, or I think my very heart wouldhave died there and then. I set the thought of Ilford, on the edge ofthe country, with its green fields and its flowers. I set the thought ofMrs. Oliver, who would love my child as tenderly as if she were her ownlittle lost one. 

I dare say it was all very weak and childish, but it is just when we aredone and down, and do not know what we are doing, that Providence seemsto be directing us, and it was so with me at that moment. 

The trams being full I had concluded that Fate had set itself againstmy spending any of Isabel's money, and had made up my mind to make afierce fight over the last stage of my journey, when I saw that a littleahead of where I was standing the road divided into two branches at anacute angle, one branch going to the right and the other to the left. 

Not all Emmerjane's instructions about keeping "as straight as a' arrow"sufficed to show me which of the two roads to take and I looked aboutfor somebody to tell me. 

It was then that I became aware of a shabby old four-wheeled cab whichstood in the triangular space in front of the statue, and of the driver(an old man, in a long coachman's coat, much worn and discoloured, and adilapidated tall hat, very shiny in patches) looking at me while he tookthe nose-bag off his horse--a bony old thing with its head hanging down. 

I stepped up to him and asked my way, and he pointed it out to me--tothe right, over the bridge and through Stratford Market. 

I asked how far it was to Ilford. 

"Better nor two mile _I_ call it, " he answered. 

After that, being so tired in brain as well as body, I asked a foolishquestion--how long it would take me to get there. 

The old driver looked at me again, and said:

"'Bout a 'our and a 'alf I should say by the looks of you--and youcarryin' the biby. "

I dare say my face dropped sadly as I turned away, feeling very tired, yet determined to struggle through. But hardly had I walked twenty paceswhen I heard the cab coming up behind and the old driver crying:

"'Old on, missie. "

I stopped, and to my surprise he drew up by my side, got down from hisbox, opened the door of his cab and said:

"Ger in. "

I told him I could not afford to ride. 

"Ger in, " he said again more loudly, and as if angry with himself forhaving to say it. 

Again I made some demur, and then the old man said, speaking fiercelythrough his grizzly beard:

"Look 'ere, missie. I 'ave a gel o' my own lost somewheres, and Iwouldn't be ans'rable to my ole woman if I let you walk with a face likethat. "

I don't know what I said to him. I only know that my tears gushed outand that at the next moment I was sitting in the cab. 

What happened then I do not remember, except that the dull rumble of thewheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and that I saw through themist before my eyes a sluggish river, a muddy canal, and patches ofmarshy fields. 

I think my weariness and perhaps my emotion, added to the heavymonotonous trotting of the old horse, must have put me to sleep, forafter a while I was conscious of a great deal of noise, and of the olddriver twisting about and shouting in a cheerful voice through the openwindow at the back of his seat:

"Stratford Market. "

After a while we came to a broad road, full of good houses, and then theold driver cried "Ilford, " and asked what part of it I wished to go to. 

I reached forward and told him, "10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's Green, " andthen sat back with a lighter heart. 

But after another little while I saw a great many funeral cars passingus, with the hearses empty, as if returning from a cemetery. This mademe think of the woman and her story, and I found myself unconsciouslyclasping my baby closer. 

The cortèges became so numerous at last that to shut out painful sightsI closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasanter things. 

I thought, above all, of Mrs. Oliver's house, as I had always seen it inmy mind's eye--not a pretentious place at all, only a little humblecottage but very sweet and clean, covered with creepers and perhaps withroses. 

I was still occupied with these visions when I felt the cab turn sharplyto the left. Then opening my eyes I saw that we were running down a kindof alley-way, with a row of very mean little two-storey houses on theone side, and on the other, a kind of waste ground strewn with brokenbottles, broken iron pans, broken earthenware and other refuse, interspersed with tufts of long scraggy grass, which looked the morewretched because the sinking sun was glistening over it. 

Suddenly the cab slowed down and stopped. Then the old man jumped fromhis box and opening his cab door, said:

"Here you are, missie. This is your destingnation. "

There must have been a moment of semi-consciousness in which I got outof the cab, for when I came to full possession of myself I was standingon a narrow pavement in front of a closed door which bore the number10. 

At first I was stunned. Then my heart was in my mouth and it was as muchas I could do not to burst out crying. Finally I wanted to fly, and Iturned back to the cab, but it had gone and was already passing roundthe corner. 

It was six o'clock. I was very tired. I was nine miles from Bayswater. Icould not possibly carry baby back. What _could_ I do?

Then, my brain being unable to think, a mystic feeling (born perhaps ofmy life in the convent) came over me--a feeling that all that hadhappened on my long journey, all I had seen and everything that had beensaid to me, had been intended to prepare me for (and perhaps to save mefrom) the dangers that were to come. 

I think that gave me a certain courage, for with what strength of bodyand spirit I had left (though my heart was in my mouth still) I steppedacross the pavement and knocked at the door. 

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My great-hearted, heroic little woman!

All this time I, in my vain belief that our expedition was of someconsequence to the world, was trying to comfort myself with the thoughtthat my darling must have heard of my safety. 

But how could I imagine that she had hidden herself away in a mass ofhumanity--which appears to be the most impenetrable depths into which ahuman being can disappear?

How could I dream that, to the exclusion of all such interests as mine, she was occupied day and night, night and day, with the joys andsorrows, the raptures and fears of the mighty passion of Motherhood, which seems to be the only thing in life that is really great andeternal?

Above all, how could I believe that in London itself, in the heart ofthe civilised and religious world, she was going through trials whichmake mine, in the grim darkness of the Polar night, seem trivial andeasy?

It is all over now, and though, thank God, I did not know at the timewhat was happening to my dear one at home, it is some comfort to me toremember that I was acting exactly as if I did. 

From the day we turned hack I heard my darling's voice no more. But Ihad a still more perplexing and tormenting experience, and that was adream about her, in which she was walking on a crevassed glacier towardsa precipice which she could not see because the brilliant rays of theaurora were in her eyes. 

Anybody may make what he likes of that on grounds of natural law, andcertainly it was not surprising that my dreams should speak to me inpictures drawn from the perils of my daily life, but only one thingmatters now--that these experiences of my sleeping hours increased myeagerness to get back to my dear one. 

My comrades were no impediment to that, I can tell you. With their facesturned homewards, and the wind at their backs, they were showingtremendous staying power, although we had thirty and forty below zeropretty constantly, with rough going all the time, for the snow had beenruckled up by the blizzard to almost impassable heaps and hummocks. 

On reaching our second installation at Mount Darwin I sent a message tothe men at the foot of Mount Erebus, telling them to get intocommunication (through Macquarie Island) with the captain of our ship inNew Zealand, asking him to return for us as soon as the ice conditionswould permit; and this was the last of our jobs (except packing ourinstruments tight and warm) before we started down the "long whitegateway" for our quarters at the Cape. 

With all the heart in the world, though, our going had to be slow. Itwas the middle of the Antarctic winter, when absolute night reigned forweeks and we had nothing to alleviate the darkness but the light of thescudding moon, and sometimes the glory of the aurora as it encircled theregion of the unrisen sun. 

Nevertheless my comrades sang their way home through the sullen gloom. Sometimes I wakened the echoes of those desolate old hills myself with astave of "Sally's the gel, " although I was suffering a good deal from mydarker thoughts of what the damnable hypocrisies of life might be doingwith my darling, and my desire to take my share of her trouble whateverit might be. 

The sun returned the second week in August. Nobody can know what reliefthat brought us except those who have lived for months without it. Tosee the divine and wonderful thing rise up like a god over those lonewhite regions is to know what a puny thing man is in the scheme of theworld. 

I think all of us felt like that at sight of the sun, though some(myself among the rest) were thinking more of it as a kind of messagefrom friends at home. But old Treacle, I remember, who had stood lookingat it in awed solemnity, said:

"Well, I'm d----!"

After that we got on famously until we reached Winter Quarters, where wefound everybody well and everything in order, but received one piece ofalarming intelligence--that the attempt to get into wirelesscommunication with our ship had failed, with the result that we shouldhave to wait for her until the time originally appointed for her return. 

That did not seem to matter much to my shipmates, who, being snuglyhoused from blinding blizzards, settled down to amuse themselves withsing-songs and story-tellings and readings. 

But, do what I would, to me the delay was dreadful, and every day, inthe fever of my anxiety to get away as soon as the ice permitted, Iclimbed the slopes of old Erebus with O'Sullivan, to look throughpowerful glasses for what the good chap called the "open wather. "

Thank God, our wooden house was large enough to admit of my having acabin to myself, for I should have been ashamed of my comrades hearingthe cries that sometimes burst from me in the night. 

It is hard for civilised men at home, accustomed to hold themselvesunder control, to realise how a man's mind can run away from him when heis thousands of miles separated from his dear ones, and has a kind ofspiritual certainty that evil is befalling them. 

I don't think I am a bigger fool than most men in that way, but I shivereven yet at the memory of all the torment I went through during thosedays of waiting, for my whole life seemed to revolve before me and Iaccused myself of a thousand offences which I had thought dead andburied and forgotten. 

Some of these were trivial in themselves, such as hot and intemperatewords spoken in childhood to my good old people at home, disobedience oringratitude shown to them, with all the usual actions of a naughty boy, who ought to have been spanked and never was. 

But the worst of them concerned my darling, and came with the thought ofmy responsibility for the situation in which I felt sure she foundherself. 

A thousand times I took myself to task for that, thinking what I oughtand ought not to have done, and then giving myself every bad name and myconduct every damning epithet. 

Up and down my cabin I would walk with hands buried in my pockets, revolving these thoughts and working myself up, against my will, to afever of regret and self-accusation. 

Talk about Purgatory--the Purgatory of dear old Father Dan! That was tocome after death--mine came before, and by the holy saints, I had enoughof it. 

Two months passed like this; and when the water of the Sound was openand our ship did not appear, mine was not the only heart that was eatingitself out, for the spirits of my shipmates had also begun to sink. 

In the early part of the Antarctic spring there had been a fearfulhurricane lasting three days on the sea, with a shrieking, roaringchorus of fiends outside, and the conviction now forced itself on my menthat our ship must have gone down in the storm. 

Of course I fought this notion hard, for my last hopes were based on notbelieving it. But when after the lapse of weeks I could hold out nolonger, and we were confronted by the possibility of being held thereanother year (for how were our friends to know before the ice formedagain that it was necessary to send relief?), I faced the situationfirmly--measuring out our food and putting the men on shortened rations, twenty-eight ounces each and a thimbleful of brandy. 

By the Lord God it is a fearful thing to stand face to face with slowdeath. Some of my shipmates could scarcely bear it. The utter solitude, the sight of the same faces and the sound of the same voices, with theprospect of nothing else, seemed to drive most of them nearly mad. 

There was no sing-songing among them now, and what speaking I overheardwas generally about the great dinners they had eaten, or about theirdreams, which were usually of green fields and flower-beds and primrosesand daisies--daisies, by heaven, in a world that was like a waste!

As for me I did my best to play the game of never giving up. It was amiddling hard game, God knows, and after weeks of waiting a sense ofhelplessness settled down on me such as I had never known before. 

I am not what is called a religious man, but when I thought of mydarling's danger (for such I was sure it was) and how I was cut off fromher by thousands of miles of impassable sea, there came an overwhelminglonging to go with my troubles to somebody stronger than myself. 

I found it hard to do that at first, for a feeling of shame came overme, and I thought:

"You coward, you forgot all about God when things were going well withyou, but now that they are tumbling down, and death seems certain, youwhine and want to go where you never dreamt of going in your days ofease and strength. "

I got over that, though--there's nothing except death a man doesn't getover down there--and a dark night came when (the ice breaking from thecliffs of the Cape with a sound that made me think of my last evening atCastle Raa) I found myself folding my hands and praying to the God of mychildhood, not for myself but for my dear one, that He before whom thestrongest of humanity were nothing at all, would take her into HisFatherly keeping. 

"Help her! Help her! _I_ can do no more. "

It was just when I was down to that extremity that it pleased Providenceto come to my relief. The very next morning I was awakened out of mybroken sleep by the sound of a gun, followed by such a yell from Treacleas was enough to make you think the sea-serpent had got hold of his oldbuttocks. 

"The ship! The ship! Commander! Commander! The ship! The ship!"

And, looking out of my little window I saw him, with six or seven othermembers of our company, half naked, just as they had leapt out of theirbunks, running like savages to the edge of the sea, where the "Scotia, "with all flags flying (God bless and preserve her!), was steaming slowlyup through a grinding pack of broken ice. 

What a day that was! What shouting! What hand-shaking! For O'Sullivan itwas Donnybrook Fair with the tail of his coat left out, and for Treacleit was Whitechapel Road with "What cheer, old cock?" and an unquenchabledesire to stand treat all round. 

But what I chiefly remember is that the moment I awoke, and before theidea that we were saved and about to go home had been fully grasped bymy hazy brain, the thought flashed to my mind:

"Now you'll hear of _her!_"

 M. C. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

NINETY-FIFTH CHAPTER

The door of No. 10 was opened by a rather uncomely woman of perhapsthirty years of age, with a weak face and watery eyes. 

This was Mrs. Oliver, and it occurred to me even at that first sightthat she had the frightened and evasive look of a wife who lives underthe intimidation of a tyrannical husband. 

She welcomed me, however, with a warmth that partly dispelled mydepression and I followed her into the kitchen. 

It was the only room on the ground floor of her house (except ascullery) and it seemed sweet and clean and comfortable, having a tablein the middle of the floor, a sofa under the window, a rocking-chair onone side of the fireplace, a swinging baby's cot on the other side, andnothing about it that was not homelike and reassuring, except two largephotographs over the mantelpiece of men stripped to the waist andsparring. 

"We've been looking for you all day, ma'am, and had nearly give you up, "she said. 

Then she took baby out of my arms, removed her bonnet and pelisse, lifted her barrow-coat to examine her limbs, asked her age, kissed heron the arms, the neck and the legs, and praised her without measure. 

"And what's her name, ma'am?"

"Mary Isabel, but I wish her to be called Isabel. "

"Isabel! A beautiful name too! Fit for a angel, ma'am. And she _is_ alittle angel, bless her! Such rosy cheeks! Such a ducky little mouth!Such blue eyes--blue as the bluebells in the cemet'ry. She's as prettyas a waxwork, she really is, and any woman in the world might be proudto nurse her. "

A young mother is such a weakling that praise of her child (howevercrude) acts like a charm on her, and in spite of myself I was beginningto feel more at ease, when Mrs. Oliver's husband came downstairs. 

He was a short, thick-set man of about thirty-five, with a square chin, a very thick neck and a close-cropped red bullet head, and he was in hisstocking feet and shirt-sleeves as if he had been dressing to go out forthe evening. 

I remember that it flashed upon me--I don't know why--that he had seenme from the window of the room upstairs, driving up in the old man'sfour-wheeler, and had drawn from that innocent circumstance certaindeductions about my character and my capacity to pay. 

I must have been right, for as soon as our introduction was over and Ihad interrupted Mrs. Oliver's praises of my baby's beauty by speakingabout material matters, saying the terms were to be four shillings, theman, who had seated himself on the sofa to put on his boots said, in avoice that was like a shot out of a blunderbus:

"Five. "

"How'd you mean, Ted?" said Mrs. Oliver, timidly. "Didn't we say four?"

"Five, " said the man again, with a still louder volume of voice. 

I could see that the poor woman was trembling, but assuming the sweetair of persons who live in a constant state of fear, she said:

"Oh yes. It _was_ five, now I remember. "

I reminded her that her letter had said four, but she insisted that Imust be mistaken, and when I told her I had the letter with me and shecould see it if she wished, she said:

"Then it must have been a slip of the pen in a manner of speaking, ma'am. We allus talked of five. Didn't we, Ted?"

"Certainly, " said her husband, who was still busy with his boots. 

I saw what was going on, and I felt hot and angry, but there seemed tobe nothing to do except submit. 

"Very well, we'll say five then, " I said. 

"Paid in advance, " said the man, and when I answered that that wouldsuit me very well, he added:

"A month in advance, you know. "

By this time I felt myself trembling with indignation, as well asquivering with fear, for while I looked upon all the money I possessedas belonging to baby, to part with almost the whole of it in one momentwould reduce me to utter helplessness, so I said, turning to Mrs. Oliver:

"Is that usual?"

It did not escape me that the unhappy woman was constantly studying herhusband's face, and when he glanced up at her with a meaning look sheanswered, hurriedly:

"Oh yes, ma'am, quite usual. All the women in the Row has it. Numberfive, she has twins and gets a month in hand with both of them. Butwe'll take four weeks and I can't say no fairer than that, can I?"

"But why?" I asked. 

"Well, you see, ma'am, you're . . . You're a stranger to us, and if babywas left on our hands . . . Not as we think you'd leave her chargeableas the saying is, but if you were ever ill, and got a bit back with yourpayments . . . We being only pore people. . . . "

While the poor woman was floundering on in this way my blood was boilingand I was beginning to ask her if she supposed for one moment that Imeant to desert my child, when the man, who had finished the lacing ofhis boots, rose to his feet, and said:

"You don't want yer baiby to be give over to the Guardians for the sakeof a week or two, do you?"

That settled everything. I took out my purse and with a trembling handlaid my last precious sovereign on the table. 

A moment or two after this Mr. Oliver, who had put on his coat and acloth cap, made for the door. 

"Evenin', ma'am, " he said, and with what grace I could muster I bade himgood-bye. 

"You aren't a-going to the 'Sun' to-night, are you, Ted?" asked Mrs. Oliver. 

"Club, " said the man, and the door clashed behind him. 

I breathed more freely when he was gone, and his wife (from whose facethe look of fear vanished instantly) was like another woman. 

"Goodness gracious, " she cried, with a kind of haggard hilarity, "where's my head? Me never offering you a cup of tea, and you looking sowhite after your journey. "

I took baby back into my arms while she put on the kettle, set a blacktea-pot on the hob to warm, laid a piece of tablecloth and a thick cupand saucer on the end of the table, and then knelt on the fender totoast a little bread, talking meantime (half apologetically and halfproudly) about her husband. 

He was a bricklayer by trade, and sometimes worked at the cemetery whichI could see at the other side of the road (behind the long railings andthe tall trees), but was more generally engaged as a sort of fightinglieutenant to a Labour leader whose business it was to get up strikes. Before they were married he had been the "Light Weight Champion ofWhitechapel, " and those were photos of his fights which I could see overthe mantelpiece, but "he never did no knocking of people about now, "being "quiet and matrimonual. "

In spite of myself my heart warmed to the woman. I wonder it did notoccur to me there and then that, living in constant dread of hertyrannical husband, she would always be guilty of the dissimulation Ihad seen an example of already and that the effect of it would bereflected upon my child. 

It did not. I only told myself that she was clearly fond of children andwould be a kind nurse to my baby. It even pleased me, in my foolishmotherly selfishness, that she was a plain-featured person, whom babycould never come to love as she would, I was sure, love me. 

I felt better after I had taken tea, and as it was then seven o'clock, and the sun was setting horizontally through the cypresses of thecemetery, I knew it was time to go. 

I could not do that, though, without undressing baby and singing her tosleep. And even then I sat for a while with an aching heart, and Isabelon my knee, thinking of how I should have to go to bed that night, forthe first time, without her. 

Mrs. Oliver, in the meantime, examining the surplus linen which I hadbrought in my parcel, was bursting into whispered cries of delight overit, and, being told I had made the clothes myself, was saying:

"What a wonderful seamstress you might be if you liked, ma'am. "

At length the time came to leave baby, and no woman knows the pain ofthat experience who has not gone through it. 

Though I really believed my darling would be loved and cared for, andknew she would never miss me, or yet know that I was gone (there was apang even in that thought, and in every other kind of comforting), Icould not help it, that, as I was putting my cherub into her cot, mytears rained down on her little face and awakened her, so that I had tokneel by her side and rock her to sleep again. 

"You'll be good to my child, won't you, Mrs. Oliver?" I said. 

"'Deed I will, ma'am, " the woman replied. 

"You'll bath her every day, will you not?"

"Night and morning. I allus does, ma'am. "

"And rinse out her bottle and see that she has nice new milk fresh fromthe cow?"

"Sure as sure, ma'am. But don't you fret no more about the child, ma'am. I've been a mother myself, ma'am, and I'll be as good to your littleangel as if she was my own come back to me. "

"God bless you, " I said in a burst of anguish, and after remaining amoment longer on my knees by the cot (speaking with all my heart andsoul, though neither to nurse nor to baby) I rose to my feet, dashed thetears from my eyes, and ran out of the house. 

NINETY-SIXTH CHAPTER

I knew that my eyes were not fit to be seen in the streets, so I droppedmy dark veil and hurried along, being conscious of nothing for some timeexcept the clang of electric cars and the bustle of passers-by, to whommy poor little sorrow was nothing at all. 

But I had not gone far--I think I had not, though my senses wereconfused and vague--before I began to feel ashamed, to take myself totask, and to ask what I had to cry about. 

If I had parted from my baby it was for her own good, and if I had paidaway my last sovereign I had provided for her for a month, I had nothingto think of now except myself and how to get work. 

I never doubted that I should get work, or that I should get itimmediately, the only open question being what work and where. 

Hitherto I had thought that, being quick with my pen, I might perhapsbecome secretary to somebody; but now, remembering the typist's story("firms don't like it"), and wishing to run no risks in respect of mychild, I put that expectation away and began to soar to higher things. 

How vain they were! Remembering some kind words the Reverend Mother hadsaid about me at the convent (where I had taken more prizes than Alma, though I had never mentioned it before) I told myself that I, too, wasan educated woman. I knew Italian, French and German, and having heardthat some women could make a living by translating books for publishersI thought I might do the same. 

Nay, I could even write books myself. I was sure I could--one book atall events, about friendless girls who have to face the world forthemselves, and all good women would read it (some good men also), because they would see that it must be true. 

Oh, how vain were my thoughts! Yet in another sense they were not allvanity, for I was not thinking of fame, or what people would say aboutwhat I should write, but only what I should get for it. 

I should get money, not a great deal perhaps, yet enough for baby andme, that we might have that cottage in the country, covered withcreepers and roses, where Isabel would run about the grass by and by, and pluck the flowers in the garden. 

"So what have _you_ got to cry about, you ridiculous thing, " I thoughtwhile I hurried along, with a high step now, as if my soul had been inmy feet. 

But a mother's visions of the future are like a mirage (always gleamingwith the fairy palaces which her child is to inhabit some day), and I amnot the first to find her shadows fade away. 

I must have been walking for some time, feeling no weariness at all, when I came to the bridge by Bow Church. There I had intended to take atram, but not being tired I went on farther, thinking every stage Icould walk would be so much money to the good. 

I was deep in the Mile End Road, when a chilling thought came to me. Itwas the thought of the distance that would divide me from my child, making my visits to her difficult, and putting it out of my power toreach her quickly (perhaps even to know in time) if, as happened tochildren, she became suddenly and dangerously ill. 

I remembered the long line of telescoping thoroughfares I had passedthrough earlier in the day (with their big hospitals, their bigbreweries, their big tabernacles, their workmen's lodging-houses, theirCinema picture palaces, their Jewish theatres, and their numberlesspublic houses); and then the barrier of squalid space which would divideme from baby, if I obtained employment in the West End, seemed to beimmeasurably greater and more frightening than the space that haddivided me from Martin when he was at the other end of the world. 

Not all the allurements of my dream were sufficient to reconcile me tosuch a dangerous separation. 

"It's impossible, " I thought. "Quite impossible. "

Insensibly my rapid footsteps slackened. When I reached that part of theMile End Road in which the Jewish tailors live, and found myselflistening to a foreign language which I afterwards knew to be Yiddish, and looking at men with curls at each side of their sallow faces, slithering along as if they were wearing eastern slippers without heels, I stopped, without knowing why, at the corner of a street where anItalian organ-man was playing while a number of bright-eyed Jewishchildren danced. 

I was still looking on, hardly thinking of what I saw, when my eyes fellon an advertisement, pasted on the window of a sausage-and-ham shop atthe corner. In large written characters it ran:

 _Seamstress Wanted. Good Wages. Apply No. ---- Washington Street_. 

How little are the things on which our destiny seems to hang! In amoment I was remembering what Mrs. Oliver had said about my being a goodseamstress; and, almost before I knew what I was about, I was hurryingup the side street and knocking with my knuckles at an open door. 

A rather fat and elderly Jewess, covered with rings and gold chains, andwearing a manifest black wig, came from a room at one side of the lobby. I explained my errand, and after she had looked me over in a sort ofsurprise, as if I had not been the kind of person she expected, shesaid, in a nasal and guttural voice:

"Vait! My daughter, she speaks very vell Ainglish. "

Then turning her head over her shoulder, she pitched her voice severaloctaves higher and cried, "Miriam, " whereupon there came trippingdownstairs a Jewish girl of about eighteen, with large black eyes, thickblack hair, and such a dear good face. 

I repeated my application, and after the girl had interpreted my requestto her mother, I was asked into the lobby, and put through a kind ofcatechism. 

Was I a seamstress? No, but I wished to become one. Had I aiver vorkedon vaistcoats? I hadn't, but I could do anything with my needle. 

Perhaps the urgency of my appeal, and more probably the pressure of herown need, weighed with the Jewess, for after reflection, and an eagerwhisper from her daughter (who was looking at me with kindling eyes), she said, "Very vell, ve'll see what she can do. "

I was then taken into a close and stuffy room where a number of girls(all Jewish as I could see) were working on sections of waistcoatswhich, lying about on every side, looked like patterns for legs ofmutton. One girl was basting, another was pressing, and a third wassewing button-holes with a fine silk twist round bars of gimp. 

This last was the work which was required of me, and I was told to lookand see if I could do it. I watched the girl for a moment and then said:

"Let me try. "

Needle and twist and one of the half vests were then given to me, andafter ten minutes I had worked my first button-hole and handed it back. 

The daughter praised it warmly, but the mother said:

"Very fair, but a leedle slow. "

"Let me try again, " I said, and my trembling fingers were so eager toplease that my next button-hole was not only better but more quicklymade. 

"Beautiful!" said the daughter. "And mamma, only think, she's quickerthan Leah, already. I timed them. "

"I muz call your vader, dough, " said the Jewess, and she disappearedthrough the doorway. 

While I stood talking to the younger Jewess, who had, I could see, formed as quick an attachment for me as I for her, I heard another nasaland guttural voice (a man's) coming towards us from the hall. 

"Is she von of our people?"

"Nein! She's a Skihoah"--meaning, as I afterwards learned, a non-Jewishgirl. 

Then a tall, thin Jew entered the room behind the elderly Jewess. I hadnever before and have never since seen such a patriarchal figure. Withhis long grey beard and solemn face he might have stood for Moses in oneof the pictures that used to hang on the walls of the convent--exceptfor his velvet skull-cap and the black alpaca apron, which was speckledover with fluffy bits of thread and scraps of cloth and silk. 

He looked at me for a moment with his keen eyes, and after his wife hadshown him my work, and he had taken a pinch of snuff and blown his noseon a coloured handkerchief with the sound of a trumpet, he put methrough another catechism. 

I was trembling lest he should make intimate inquiries, but beyondasking my name, and whether I was a Christian, he did not concernhimself with personal questions. 

"Vat vages do you vant?" he asked. 

I told him I should be pleased to take whatever was paid to other girlsdoing work of the same kind. 

"Ach no! Dese girls are full-timers. You are only a greener [meaning abeginner] so you vill not expect anything like so much. "

At that his daughter repeated her assurance that I was quicker than thegirl she had called Leah; but the Jew, with an air of parental majesty, told her to be silent, and then said that as I was an "improver" hecould only take me "on piece, " naming the price (a very small one) perhalf-dozen buttons and buttonholes, with the condition that I found myown twist and did the work in my own home. 

Seeing that I should be no match for the Jew at a bargain, and being soeager to get to work at any price, I closed with his offer, and then heleft the room, after telling me to come back the next day. 

"And vhere do you lif, my dear?" said the Jewess. 

I told her Bayswater, making some excuse for being in the East End, andgetting as near to the truth as I dare venture, but feelinginstinctively, after my sight of the master of the house, that I daredsay nothing about my child. 

She told me I must live nearer to my work, and I said that was exactlywhat I wished to do--asking if she knew where I could find a room. 

Fortunately the Jewess herself had two rooms vacant at that moment, andwe went upstairs to look at them. 

Both were at the top of the house, and one of them I could have for twoshillings a week, but it was dark and cheerless, being at the back andlooking into the space over the yards in which the tenants dried theirwashing on lines stretched from pulleys. 

The other, which would cost a shilling a week more, was a lean slit of aroom, very sparsely furnished, but it was to the front, and looked downinto the varied life of the street, so I took it instantly and askedwhen I could move in. 

"Ven you like, " said the Jewess. "Everyding is ready. "

So, early next morning I bade farewell to my good Welsh landlady (wholooked grave when I told her what I was going to do) and to Emmerjane(who cried when I kissed her smudgy face) and, taking possession of mynew home, began work immediately in my first and only employment. 

Perhaps it was a deep decline after the splendours of my dreams, but Idid not allow myself to think about that. I was near to Ilford and Icould go to see Isabel every day. 

Isabel! Isabel! Isabel! Everything was Isabel, for now that Martin wasgone my hopes and my fears, my love and my life, revolved on one axisonly--my child. 

NINETY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

My employer was a Polish Jew, named Israel Abramovitch. 

He had come to England at the time of the religious persecution in theHoly Cities of Russia, set himself up in his trade as a tailor in agarret in Whitechapel, hired a "Singer, " worked with "green" labour for"slop" warehouses, and become in less than twenty years the richestforeign Jew in the East End of London, doing some of the "best bespoke"work for the large shops in the West and having the reputation (as Iafterwards found) of being the greatest of Jewish "sweaters. "

In spite of this, however, he was in his own way a deeply religious man. Strict, severe, almost superstitious in obeying the Levitical laws andin practising the sad and rather gloomy symbolism of his faith. A famousTalmudist, a pillar of the synagogue, one of the two wardens of theChevra in Brick Lane, and consequently a great upholder of moralrectitude. 

His house seemed to be a solid mass of human beings, chiefly Jewishgirls, who worked all day, and sometimes (when regulations could beevaded or double gangs engaged) all night, for the Jew drove everybodyat high speed, not excepting his wife, who cooked the food and pressedthe clothes at the same time. 

In this hive of industry I needed no spur to make me work. 

Every morning Mrs. Abramovitch brought up a thick pile of vests to myroom, and every evening she took them down again, after counting myearnings with almost preternatural rapidity and paying me, day by day, with unfailing promptitude. 

At the end of my first week I found I had made ten shillings. I wasdelighted, but after I had paid for my room and my food there was notenough for baby's board, so the second week I worked later in theevenings, and earned fourteen shillings. This was still insufficient, therefore I determined to take something from the other end of the day. 

"Morning will be better, " I thought, remembering the painful noises atnight, especially about midnight, when people were being thrown out of apublic-house higher up the street, where there was a placard in thewindow saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to "make anybodydrunk for fourpence. "

Unfortunately (being a little weak) I was always heavy in the mornings, but by great luck my room faced the east, so I conceived the idea ofmoving my bed up to the window and drawing my blinds to the top so thatthe earliest light might fall on my face and waken me. 

This device succeeded splendidly, and for many weeks of the late summerand early autumn I was up before the sun, as soon as the dawn hadbroadened and while the leaden London daylight was filtering through thesmoke of yesterday. 

By this means I increased my earnings to sixteen shillings, and, as myfingers learned to fly over their work, to seventeen and even eighteen. 

That was my maximum, and though it left a narrow margin for other needsit enabled me at the end of a month to pay another pound for baby'sboard and to put away a little towards her "shortening, " which Mrs. Oliver was always saying must be soon. 

I had to stick close to maintain this average, and I grudged even thetime occupied in buying and eating my food, though that was not a longprocess in the Mile End Road, which is full of shops where things can bebought ready cooked. After the first week I did not even need to go outfor them, for they were brought round to my room every morning, thusenabling me to live without leaving my work. 

It was a stiff life, perhaps, but let nobody think I looked upon myselfas a slave. Though I worked so hard I felt no self-pity. The thoughtthat I was working for my child sweetened all my labours. It was such ajoy to think that baby depended upon me for everything she wanted. 

Being so happy in those days I sang a great deal, though naturally notin the middle of the day, when our house was going like a mill-wheel, but in the early mornings before the electric trams began to clang, orthe hawkers with their barrows to shout, and when there was no soundeven in the East End except that ceaseless tramp, tramp, tramp in thefront street which always made me think of the children of Israel inEgypt drawing burdens for Pharaoh. 

Throwing open my window I sang all sorts of things, but, being such achild myself and so fond of make-believe, I loved best to sing mylullaby, and so pretend that baby was with me in my room, lying asleepbehind me in my bed. 

 "_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee, Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_. "

I never knew that I had any other audience than a lark in a cage on theother side of the street (perhaps I was in a cage myself, though I didnot think of that then) which always started singing when I sang, exceptthe washerwomen from a Women's Shelter going off at four to their workat the West End, and two old widows opposite who sewed Bibles andstitched cassocks, which being (so Miriam told me) the worst-paid of allsweated labour compelled them to be up as early as myself. 

It was not a very hopeful environment, yet for some time, in my littletop room, I was really happy. 

I saw baby every day. Between six and nine every night, I broke off workto go to Ilford, saying nothing about my errand to anybody, and leavingthe family of the Jew to think it was my time for recreation. 

Generally I "trammed" it from Bow Church, because I was so eager to getto my journey's end, but usually I returned on foot, for though thedistance was great I thought I slept better for the walk. 

What joyful evenings those were!

Perhaps I was not altogether satisfied about the Olivers, but that didnot matter very much. On closer acquaintance I found my baby's nurse tobe a "heedless" and "feckless" woman; and though I told myself that allallowances must be made for her in having a bad husband, I knew in mysecret heart that I was deceiving myself, and that I ought to listen tothe voices that were saying "Your child is being neglected. "

Sometimes it seemed to me that baby had not been bathed--but that onlygave me an excuse for bathing her myself. 

Sometimes I thought her clothes were not as clean as they might be--butthat only gave me the joy of washing them. 

Sometimes I was sure that her feeding-bottle had not been rinsed and hermilk was not quite fresh--but that only gave me the pleasure of scaldingthe one and boiling the other. 

More than once it flashed upon me that I was paying Mrs. Oliver to doall this--but then what a deep delight it was to be mothering my ownbaby!

Thus weeks and months passed--it is only now I know how many, for inthose days Time itself had nothing in it for me except my child--andevery new day brought the new joy of watching my baby's development. 

Oh, how wonderful it all was! To see her little mind and soul coming outof the Unknown! Out of the silence and darkness of the womb into theworld of light and sound!

First her sense of sight, with her never-ending interest in her dearlittle toes! Then her senses of touch and hearing, and the gift ofspeech, beginning with a sort of crow, and ending in the "ma-ma-ma"which the first time I heard it went prancing through and through me andwas more heavenly to my ears than the music of the spheres!

What evenings of joy I had with her!

The best of them (God forgive me!) were the nights when the bricklayerhad got into some trouble by "knocking people about" at the "Rising Sun"and his wife had to go off to rescue him from the police. 

Then, baby being "shortened, " I would prop her up in her cot while Isang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lipcontinued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts andwaltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle hummed over thefire and the bricklayer's kitchen buzzed softly like a hive of bees. 

Oh dear! Oh dear! I may have been down in the depths, yet there is noplace so dark that it may not be brightened by a sunbeam, and my sunbeamwas my child. 

And then Martin--baby was constantly making me think of him. Devouringher with my eyes, I caught resemblances every day--in her eyes, hervoice, her smile, and, above all, in that gurgling laugh that was likewater bubbling out of a bottle. 

I used to talk to her about him, pouring all my sentimental secrets intoher ears, just as if she understood, telling her what a great man herfather had been and how he loved both of us--_would_ have done if he hadlived longer. 

I dare say it was very foolish. Yet I cannot think it was allfoolishness. Many and many a time since I have wondered if the holysaints, who knew what had really happened to Martin, were whispering allthis in my ear as a means of keeping my love for him as much alive as ifhe had been constantly by my side. 

The climax came when Isabel was about five months old, for then thefeeling about baby and Martin reached another and higher phase. 

I hardly dare to speak of it, lest it should seem silly when it wasreally so sacred and so exalted. 

The idea I had had before baby was born, that she was being sent toconsole me (to be a link between my lost one and me), developed into thestartling and rapturous thought that the very soul of Martin had passedinto my child. 

"So Martin is not dead at all, " I thought, "not really dead, because helives in baby. "

It is impossible to say how this thought stirred me; how it filled myheart with thankfulness; how I prayed that the little body in which thesoul of my Martin had come to dwell might grow beautiful and strong andworthy of him; how I felt charged with another and still greaterresponsibility to guard and protect her with my life itself if need be. 

"Yes, yes, my very life itself, " I thought. 

Perhaps this was a sort of delirium, born of my great love, my hardwork, and my failing strength. I did not know, I did not care. 

All that mattered to me then was one thing only--that whereas hitherto Ihad thought Martin was so far gone from me that not Time but onlyEternity would bring us together, now I felt that he was coming back andback to me--nearer and nearer and nearer every day. 

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My dear, noble little woman was right in more ways than she knew. 

At that very time I was in literal truth hurrying home to her as fast asthe fastest available vessel could carry me. 

As soon as we had boarded the _Scotia_ at the Cape and greeted our oldshipmates, we shouted for our letters. 

There were some for all of us and heaps for me, so I scuttled down to mycabin, where I sorted the envelopes like a pack of cards, looking forthe small delicate hand that used to write my letters and speeches. 

To my dismay it was not there, and realizing that fact I bundled theletters into a locker and never looked at them again until we were twodays out--when I found they were chiefly congratulations from mycommittee, the proprietor of my newspaper, and the Royal GeographicalSociety, all welcome enough in their way, but Dead Sea fruit to a manwith an empty, heaving heart. 

Going up on deck I found every face about me shining like the aurora, for the men had had good news all round, one having come into a fortuneand another into the fatherhood of twins, and both being in a state ofjoy and excitement. 

But all the good fellows were like boys. Some of them (with laughterseasoned by a few tears) read me funny bits out of their wives'letters--bits too that were not funny, about having "a pretty fit ofhysterics" at reading bad news of us and "wanting to kiss the newsboy"when he brought the paper contradicting it. 

I did my best to play the game of rejoicing, pretending I had had goodnews also, and everything was going splendid. But I found it hard enoughto keep it going, especially while we were sailing back to the world, aswe called it, and hearing from the crew the news of what had happenedwhile we had been away. 

First, there was the reason for the delay in the arrival of the ship, which had been due not to failure of the wireless at our end, but to abreakdown on Macquarie Island. 

And then there was the account of the report of the loss of the _Scotia_in the gale going out, which had been believed on insufficient evidence(as I thought), but recorded in generous words of regret that sent theblood boiling to a man's face and made him wish to heaven they could betrue. 

We were only five or six days sailing to New Zealand, but the strain tome was terrible, for the thought was always uppermost:

"Why didn't she write a word of welcome to reach me on my return tocivilisation?"

When I was not talking to somebody that question was constantly hauntingme. To escape from it I joined the sports of my shipmates, who withjoyful news in their hearts and fresh food in their stomachs werefeeling as good as new in spite of all they had suffered. 

But the morning we smelt land, the morning the cloud banks above theeastern horizon came out hard and fast and sure (no dreamland thistime), I stood at the ship's bow, saying nothing to anybody, onlystraining my eyes for the yet distant world we were coming back to outof that desolate white waste, and thinking:

"Surely I'll have news from her before nightfall. "

There was a big warm-hearted crowd on the pier at Port Lyttelton. Treacle said, "Gawd. I didn't know there was so many people in theworld, Guv'nor;" and O'Sullivan, catching sight of a pretty figure undera sunshade, tugged at my arm and cried (in the voice of an astronomerwho has discovered a planet), "Commanther! Commanther! A _girl!_"

Almost before we had been brought to, a company of scientific visitorscame aboard; but I was more concerned about the telegrams that had comeat the same moment, so hurrying down to my cabin I tore them open like avulture riving its prey--always looking at the signatures first andnever touching an envelope without thinking:

"Oh God, what will be inside of it?"

There was nothing from my dear one! Invitations to dine, to lecture, towrite books, to do this and that and Heaven knows what, but never a wordfrom her who was more to me than all the world besides. 

This made me more than ever sure of the "voices" that had called me backfrom the 88th latitude, so I decided instantly to leave our ship in NewZealand, in readiness for our next effort, and getting across to Sydneyto take the first fast steamer home. 

The good people at Port Lyttelton were loath to let us go. But after Ihad made my excuses, ("crazy to get back to wives and sweethearts, youknow") they sent a school of boys (stunning little chaps in Eton suits)to sing us off with "Forty Years On"--which brought more of my motherinto my eyes than I knew to be left there. 

At Sydney we had the same experience--the same hearty crowds, the samewelcome, the same invitations, to which we made the same replies, andthen got away by a fast liner which happened to be ready to sail. 

On the way "back to the world" I had slung together a sort of a despatchfor the newspaper which had promoted our expedition (a lame, limpingthing for want of my darling's help to make it go), saying somethingabout the little we had been able to do but more about what we meant, please God, to do some day. 

"She'll see that, anyway, and know we're coming back, " I thought. 

But to make doubly sure I sent two personal telegrams, one to my dearone at Castle Raa and the other to my old people at home, asking foranswers to Port Said. 

Out on the sea again I was tormented by the old dream of the crevassedglacier; and if anybody wonders why a hulking chap who had not beenafraid of a ninety-mile blizzard in the region of the Pole allowedhimself to be kept awake at night by a buzzing in the brain, all I cansay is that it was so, and I know nothing more about it. 

Perhaps my recent experience with the "wireless" persuaded me that iftwo sticks stuck in the earth could be made to communicate with eachother over hundreds of miles, two hearts that loved each other knew nolimitations of time or space. 

In any case I was now so sure that my dear one had called me home fromthe Antarctic that by the time we reached Port Said, and telegrams werepouring in on me, I had worked myself up to such a fear that I dared notopen them. 

From sheer dread of the joy or sorrow that might be enclosed in theyellow covers, I got O'Sullivan down in my cabin to read my telegrams, while I scanned his face and nearly choked with my own tobacco smoke. 

There was nothing from my dear one! Nothing from my people at homeeither!

O'Sullivan got it into his head that I was worrying about my parents, and tried to comfort me by saying that old folks never dreamt oftelegraphing, but by the holy immaculate Mother he'd go bail there wouldbe a letter for me before long. 

There was. 

We stayed two eternal days at Port Said while the vessel was taking coalfor the rest of the voyage, and almost at the moment of sailing a letterarrived from Ellan, which, falling into O'Sullivan's hands first, senthim flying through the steamer and shouting at the top of his voice:

"Commanther! Commanther!"

The passengers gave room for him, and told me afterwards of his beamingface. And when he burst into my cabin I too felt sure he had brought megood news, which he had, though it was not all that I wanted. 

"The way I was sure there would be a letter for you soon, and by theholy St. Patrick and St. Thomas, here it is, " he cried. 

The letter was from my father, and I had to brace myself before I couldread it. 

It was full of fatherly love, motherly love, too, and the extravagantpride my dear good old people had of me ("everybody's talking of you, myboy, and there's nothing else in the newspapers"); but not a word aboutmy Mary--or only one, and that seemed worse than none at all. 

"You must have heard of the trouble at Castle Raa. Very sad, but thishappy hour is not the time to say anything about it. "

Nothing more! Only reams and reams of sweet parental chatter which (Godforgive me!) I would have gladly given over and over again for one plainsentence about my darling. 

Being now more than ever sure that some kind of catastrophe hadovertaken my poor little woman, I telegraphed to her again, this time(without knowing what mischief I was making) at the house of DanielO'Neill--telling myself that, though the man was a brute who hadsacrificed his daughter to his lust of rank and power and all the restof his rotten aspirations, he was her father, and, if her reprobate of ahusband had turned her out, he must surely have taken her in. 

"Cable reply to Malta. Altogether too bad not hearing from you, " I said. 

A blind, hasty, cruel telegram, but thank God she never received it!

M. C. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

NINETY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

Day by day it became more and more difficult for me to throw dust in myown eyes about the Olivers. 

One evening on reaching their house a little after six, as usual, Ifound the front door open, the kitchen empty save for baby, who, sittingup in her cot, was holding quiet converse with her toes, and the twoOlivers talking loudly (probably by pre-arrangement) in the roomupstairs. 

The talk was about baby, which was "a noosance, " interfering with aman's sleep by night and driving him out of his home by day. And howmuch did they get for it? Nothing, in a manner of speaking. What did thewoman (meaning me) think the "bleedin' place" was--"a philanthropicinstitooshun" or a "charity orginisation gime"?

After this I heard the bricklayer thunder downstairs in his heavy bootsand go out of the house without coming into the kitchen, leaving hiswife (moral coward that he was) to settle his account with me. 

Then Mrs. Oliver came down, with many sighs, expressed surprise atseeing me and fear that I might have overheard what had been said in theroom above. 

"Sorry to say I've been having a few words with Ted, ma'am, and tell youthe truth it was about you. "

Ted had always been against her nursing, and she must admit it wasn'twise of a woman to let her man go to the public-house to get out of theway of a crying child; but though she was a-running herself off her feetto attend to the pore dear, and milk was up a penny, she had growd thatfond of my baby since she lost her own that she couldn't abear to partwith the jewel, and perhaps if I could pay a little more--Ted saidseven, but she said six, and a shilling a week wouldn't hurt me--shecould over-persuade him to let the dear precious stay. 

I was trembling with indignation while I listened to the woman's whining(knowing well I was being imposed upon), but I was helpless and so Iagreed. 

My complacency had a bad effect on the Olivers, who continued to makefresh extortions, until their demands almost drove me to despair. 

I thought a climax had been reached when one night a neighbour came tothe door and, calling Mrs. Oliver into the lobby, communicated some newsin a whisper which brought her back with a frightened face for her cloakand hat, saying "something was a matter with Ted" and she must "run awayquick to him. "

When she returned an hour or two later she was crying, and with sobsbetween her words she told me that Ted (having taken a drop too much)had "knocked somebody about" at the "Sun. " As a consequence he hadfallen into the hands of the police, and would be brought before themagistrate the following morning, when, being unable to pay the fine, hewould have to "do time"--just as a strike was a-coming on, too, and hewas expecting good pay from the Strike Committee. 

"And what is to happen to me and the baby while my 'usband is inprison?" she said. 

I knew it was an act of weakness, but, thinking of my child and thedanger of its being homeless, I asked what the amount of the fine wouldprobably be, and being told ten-and-six, I gave the money, though it wasnearly all I had in the world. 

I paid for my weakness, though, and have reason to remember it. 

The extortions of the Olivers had brought me to so narrow a marginbetween my earnings and expenses that I lay awake nearly all that nightthinking what I could do to increase the one or reduce the other. Theonly thing I found possible was to change to cheaper quarters. So nextmorning, with a rather heavy heart, I asked Mrs. Abramovitch if the roomat the back of the house was still empty, and hearing that it was Imoved into it the same day. 

That was a small and not a very wise economy. 

My new room was cheerless as well as dark, with no sights but theclothes that were drying from the pulley-lines and no sounds but thewhoops of the boys of the neighbourhood playing at "Red Indians" on thetop of the yard walls. 

But it was about the same as the other in size and furniture, and afterI had decorated it with my few treasures--the Reverend Mother's rosary, which I hung on the head of the bed, and my darling mother's miniature, which I pinned up over the fire--I thought it looked bright andhomelike. 

All this time, too, I was between the nether and the upper mill-stone. 

My employer, the Jew (though he must have seen that I was sweatingmyself much more than the law would have allowed him to sweat me), couldnot forgive himself when he found that I was earning more by "piece"than he would have had to pay me by the day, or resist the temptation tosquare accounts with me at the earliest possible opportunity. 

Unfortunately, his opportunity came only too quickly, and it led(however indirectly) to the most startling fact that has ever, perhaps, entered into a woman's life. 

I had not been more than three months at the Jew's house when the Jewishfestivals came round--New Year's Day, the Day of Atonement, and theFeast of Tabernacles--which, falling near together and occupying manydays, disturbed his own habits of work entirely. 

One of the tasks he reserved for himself was that of taking the bestpaid of his "best-bespoke" back to the large shops in the West End, andwaiting for the return orders. But finding that the festivals interferedwith these journeys, he decided that they should be made by me, who wassupposed to know the West End (having lived in it) and to present arespectable appearance. 

I was reluctant to undertake the new duty, for though the Jew was to payme a few shillings a week for it, I saw I could earn more in the timewith my needle. But when he laid his long, hairy forefinger on the sideof his nose and said with a significant smile:

"You vill be gradeful, and convenience your employer, mine child, " Iagreed. 

Thus it came to pass that not only during the Jewish festivals, but formonths after they were over, I carried a rather large black bag by tramor rail to the district that lies at the back of Piccadilly and alongOxford Street as far west as the Marble Arch. 

I had to go whenever called upon and to wait as long as wanted, so thatin the height of the tailoring season I was out in the West End at allirregular hours of night, and even returned to my lodgings on one or twooccasions in the raw sunshine of the early mornings. 

The one terror of my West End journeys was that I might meet SisterMildred. I never did. In the multitude of faces which passed through thestreets, flashing and disappearing like waves under the moon at sea, Inever once caught a glimpse of a face I knew. 

But what sights I saw for all that! What piercing, piteous proofs thatbetween the rich and the poor there is a great gulf fixed!

The splendid carriages driving in and out of the Park; the sumptuouslydressed ladies strolling through Bond Street; the fashionable churchparaders; the white plumes and diamond stars which sometimes gleamedbehind the glow of the electric broughams gliding down the Mall. 

"I used to be a-toffed up like that onct, " I heard an old woman who wasselling matches say as a lady in an ermine coat stepped out of a theatreinto an automobile and was wrapped round in a tiger-skin rug. 

Sometimes it happened that, returning to the East End after the motor'buses had ceased to ply, I had to slip through the silent LeicesterSquare and the empty Strand to the Underground Railway on theEmbankment. 

Then I would see the wretched men and women who were huddled together inthe darkness on the steps to the river (whose ever-flowing waters musthave witnessed so many generations of human wreckage), and, glancing upat the big hotels and palatial mansions full of ladies newly returnedfrom theatres and restaurants in their satin slippers and silkstockings, I would wonder how they could lie in their white beds atnight in rooms whose windows looked down on such scenes. 

But the sight that stirred me most (though it did not awaken my charity, which shows what a lean-souled thing I was myself) was that of the"public women, " the street-walkers, as I used to call them, whom I sawin Piccadilly with their fine clothes and painted faces, sauntering infront of the clubs or tripping along with a light step and trying toattract the attention of the men. 

I found no pathos in the position of such women. On the contrary, I hadan unspeakable horror and hatred and loathing of them, feeling that notemptation, no poverty, no pressure that could ever be brought to bearupon a woman in life or in death excused her for committing so great awrong on the sanctity of her sex as to give up her womanhood at any callbut that of love. 

"Nothing could make me do it, " I used to think, "nothing in this world. "

But O God! how little I knew then what is in a woman's heart to do whenshe has a child to live for, and is helpless and alone!

I cannot expect anybody to forgive me for what I did (or attempted todo), and now that the time has come to tell of it my hand trembles, andbody and soul seem to be quivering like a flame. 

May God (who has brought everything to such a glorious end) have mercyon me and forgive me, and help me to be true!

NINETY-NINTH CHAPTER

The worst consequence of my West End journeys was that my nightly visitsto Ilford were fewer than before, and that the constant narrowing of themargin between my income and my expenses made it impossible for me to gothere during the day. 

As a result my baby received less and less attention, and I could not beblind to the fact that she was growing paler and thinner. 

At length she developed a cough which troubled me a great deal. Mrs. Oliver made light of it, saying a few pennyworths of paregoric woulddrive it away, so I hurried off to a chemist, who recommended a soothingsyrup of his own, saying it was safer and more effectual for a child. 

The syrup seemed to stop the cough but to disturb the digestion, for Isaw the stain of curdled milk on baby's bib and was conscious of herincreasing weakness. 

This alarmed me very much, and little as I knew of children's ailments, I became convinced that she stood in need of more fresh air, so Ientreated Mrs. Oliver to take her for a walk every day. 

I doubt if she ever did so, for as often as I would say:

"Has baby been out to-day, nurse?" Mrs. Oliver would make some lameexcuse and pass quickly to another subject. 

At last, being unable to bear the strain any longer, I burst out on thewoman with bitter reproaches, and then she broke down into tears andexplained everything. She was behind with her rent, the landlord wasthreatening, and she dared not leave the house for a moment lest heshould lock her out altogether. 

"I don't mind telling you, it's all along of Ted, ma'am. He's on strikewages but he spends it at the 'Sun. ' He has never been the man tome--never once since I married him. I could work and keep the housecomfortable without him, but he wouldn't let me a-be, because he knows Ilove, him dear. Yes, I do, I love him dear, " she continued, breakinginto hysterical sobs, "and if he came home and killed me I could kisshim with my last breath. "

This touched me more than I can say. A sense of something tragic in theposition of the poor woman, who knew the character of the man she lovedas well as the weakness which compelled her to love him, made mesympathise with her for the first time, and think (with a shudderingmemory of my own marriage) how many millions of women there must be inthe world who were in a worse position than myself. 

On returning to my room that night I began to look about to see if I hadanything I could sell in order to help Mrs. Oliver, and so put an end tothe condition that kept my baby a prisoner in her house. 

I had nothing, or next to nothing. Except the Reverend Mother's rosary(worth no more than three or four shillings) I had only my mother'sminiature, which was framed in gold and set in pearls, but that was themost precious of all my earthly possessions except my child. 

Again and again when I looked at it in my darkest hours I had found newstrength and courage. It had been like a shrine to me--what the image ofthe Virgin was in happier days--and thinking of all that my darlingmother had done and suffered and sacrificed for my sake when I wasmyself a child, I felt that I could never part with her picture underthe pressure of any necessity whatever. 

"Never, " I thought, "never under any circumstances. "

It must have been about a week after this that I went to Ilford on oneof those chill, clammy nights which seem peculiar to the East End ofLondon, where the atmosphere, compounded of smoke and fog and thindrizzling rain; penetrates to the bone and hangs on one's shoulders likea shroud. 

Thinking of this, as I thought of everything, in relation to baby, Ibought, as I was passing a hosier's shop, a pair of nice warm stockingsand a little woollen jacket. 

When I reached the Olivers' I found, to my surprise, two strange menstretched out at large in the kitchen, one on the sofa and the other inthe rocking-chair, both smoking strong tobacco and baby coughingconstantly. 

Before I realised what had happened Mrs. Oliver called me into thescullery, and, after closing the door on us, she explained the position, in whispers broken by sobs. 

It was the rent. These were the bailiff's men put into possession by thelandlord, and unless she could find two pounds ten by nine o'clockto-morrow morning, she and her husband would be sold up and turned intothe street. 

"The home as I've been scraping and pinching to keep together!" shecried. "For the sake of two pound ten! . . . You couldn't lend us thatmuch, could you?"

I told her I could not, but she renewed her entreaties, asking me tothink if I had not something I could pawn for them, and saying that Tedand she would consider it "a sacred dooty" to repay. 

Again I told her I had nothing--I was trying not to think of theminiature--but just at that moment she caught sight of the child'sjacket which I was still holding in my hand, and she fell on me withbitter reproaches. 

"You've money enough to spend on baby, though. It's crool. Her living inlukshry and getting new milk night and day, and fine clothes beingbought for her constant, and my pore Ted without a roof to cover him inweather same as this. It breaks my heart. It do indeed. Take your childaway, ma'am. Take her to-night, afore we're turned out of house and hometo-morrow morning. "

Before the hysterical cries with which Mrs. Oliver said this had cometo an end I was on my way back to my room at the Jew's. But it was babyI was thinking of in relation to that cold, clammy night--that it wouldbe impossible to take her out in it (even if I had somewhere to take herto, which I had not) without risk to her health and perhaps her life. 

With trembling fingers and an awful pain at my heart I took my mother'sminiature from the wall and wrapped it up in tissue paper. 

A few minutes afterwards I was back in the damp streets, walking fastand eagerly, cutting over the lines of the electric trams withoutlooking for the crossings. 

I knew where I was going to--I was going to a pawnbroker's in the MileEnd Waste which I had seen on my West End journeys. When I got there Istole in at a side door, half-closing my eyes as I did so, by thatstrange impulse which causes us to see nothing when we do not wish to beseen. 

I shall never forget the scene inside. I think it must have left a scaron my brain, for I see it now in every detail--the little darkcompartment; the high counter; the shelves at the back full of parcels, like those of a left-luggage room at a railway station; the heavy, baggy, big-faced man in shirt-sleeves with a long cigar held between histeeth at the corner of his frothy mouth; and then my own hurriedbreathing; my thin fingers opening the tissue paper and holding out theminiature; the man's coarse hands fumbling it; his casual air as helooked at it and cheapened it, as if it had been a common thing scarcelyworthy of consideration. 

"What's this 'ere old-fashion'd thing? Portrait of yourgreat-grandmother? Hum! Not 'arf bad-looking fice, neither. "

I think my eyes must have been blazing like hot coals. I am sure I bitmy lips (I felt them damp and knew they were bleeding) to prevent myselffrom flinging out at the man in spite of my necessity. But I did my bestto control my trembling mouth, and when he asked me how much I wanted onthe miniature I answered, with a gulp in my throat:

"Two pounds ten, if you please, sir. "

"Couldn't do it, " said the pawnbroker. 

I stood speechless for a moment, not knowing what to say next, and thenthe pawnbroker, with apparent indifference, said:

"I'll give you two ten for it out and out. "

"You mean I am to _sell_ . . . "

"Yus, take it or leave it, my dear. "

It is no use saying what I suffered at that moment. I think I became tenyears older during the few minutes I stood at that counter. 

But they came to an end somehow, and the next thing I knew was that Iwas on my way back to Ilford; that the damp air had deepened into rain;that miserable and perhaps homeless beings, ill-clad and ill-fed, werecreeping along in the searching cold with that shuffling sound which badboots make on a wet pavement; and that I was telling myself with afluttering heart that the sheltering wings of my beautiful mother inheaven had come to cover my child. 

On reaching the Olivers', hot and breathless, I put three gold coins, two sovereigns and a half-sovereign, on to the table to pay off thebroker's men. 

They had been settling themselves for the night, and looked surprisedand I thought chagrined, but took up the money and went away. 

As they were going off one of them called me to the door, and in thelittle space at the foot of the stairs he said, tipping his fingerstowards the cot:

"If that's your kiddie, miss, I recommend you to get it out o' this 'ereplace quick--see?"

I stayed an hour or two longer because I was troubled about baby'scough; and before I left, being still uneasy, I did what I had neverdone before--wrote my address at the Jew's house, so that I could besent for if I was ever wanted. 

ONE HUNDREDTH CHAPTER

When I awoke next morning the last word of the broker's man seemed to beringing in my ears. 

I knew it was true; I knew I ought to remove baby from the house of theOlivers without another day's delay, but I was at a loss to know what todo with her. 

To bring her to my own room at the Jew's was obviously impossible, andto advertise for a nurse for my child was to run the risk of fallinginto the toils of somebody who might do worse than neglect her. 

In my great perplexity I recalled the waitress at the restaurant whosechild had been moved to a Home in the country, and for some moments Ithought how much better it would be that baby should be "bonny and well"instead of pale and thin as she was now. But when I reflected that if Itook her to a public institution I should see her only once a month, Itold myself that I could not and would not do so. 

"I'll work my fingers to the bone first, " I thought. 

Yet life makes a fearful tug at a woman when it has once got hold ofher, and, strangely enough, it was in the Jew's house that I first cameto see that for the child's own sake I must part with her. 

Somewhere about the time of my moving into the back room my employermade a kind of bower of branches and evergreens over the lead-flat roofof an outhouse in his back-yard--a Succah, as Miriam called it, built inhonour of the Feast of Tabernacles, as a symbol of the time when theIsraelites in the Wilderness dwelt in booths. 

In this Succah the Jew's family ate all their meals during the seven oreight days of the Jewish feast, and one morning, as I sat at work by myopen window, I heard Miriam after breakfast reading something from theBooks of Moses. 

It was the beautiful story of Jacob parting with Benjamin in the days ofthe famine, when there was corn in Egypt only--how the poor old fatherin his great love could not bring himself to give up his beloved son, although death threatened him; how Judah pleaded with Jacob to send theboy with him into the far country lest they should all die, "both we andthou and also our little ones;" and how at last Jacob said, "If it mustbe so, do this, " but "if I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. "

It would be hard to say how deeply this story moved me while I listenedfrom my room above. And now that I thought of it again, I saw that I wasonly sacrificing my child to my selfish love of her, and therefore theduty of a true mother was to put her into a Home. 

It would not be for long. The work I was doing was not the only kind Iwas capable of. After I had liberated myself from the daily extortionsof the Olivers I should be free to look about for more congenial andprofitable employment; and then by and by baby and I might live togetherin that sweet cottage in the country (I always pictured it as a kind ofSunny Lodge, with roses looking in at the window of "Mary O'Neill'slittle room") which still shone through my dreams. 

I spent some sleepless nights in reconciling myself to all this, andperhaps wept a little, too, at the thought that after years ofseparation I might be a stranger to my own darling. But at length I putmy faith in "the call of the blood" to tell her she was mine, and thennothing remained except to select the institution to which my only loveand treasure was to be assigned. 

Accident helped me in this as in other things. One day on my westwardjourney a woman who sat beside me in the tram, and was constantly wipingher eyes (though I could see a sort of sunshine through her tears), could not help telling me, out of the overflowing of her poor heart, what had just been happening to her. 

She was a widow, and had been leaving her little girl, three years old, at an orphanage, and though it had been hard to part with her, and thelittle darling had looked so pitiful when she came away, it would be thebest for both of them in the long run. 

I asked which orphanage it was, and she mentioned the name of it, telling me something about the founder--a good doctor who had been afather to the fatherless of thousands of poor women like herself. 

That brought me to a quick decision, and the very next morning, puttingon my hat and coat, I set off for the Home, which I knew where to find, having walked round it on my way back from the West End and heard themerry voices of happy children who were playing behind a high wall. 

I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the mood in whichI entered the orphanage. In spite of all that life had done to me, Ireally and truly felt as if I were about to confer an immense favourupon the doctor by allowing him to take care of my little woman. 

Oh, how well I remember that little point of time!

My first disappointment was to learn that the good doctor was dead, andwhen I was shown into the office of his successor (everything bore sucha businesslike air) I found an elderly man with a long "three-decker"neck and a glacial smile, who, pushing his spectacles up on to hisforehead, said in a freezing voice:

"Well, ma'am, what is _your_ pleasure?"

After a moment of giddiness I began to tell him my story--how I had achild and her nurse was not taking proper care of her; how I was inuncongenial employment myself, but hoped soon to get better; how I lovedmy little one and expected to be able to provide for her presently; andhow, therefore, if he would receive her for a while, only a littlewhile, on the understanding, the clear and definite understanding, thatI could take her away as soon as I wished to. . . . 

Oh dear! Oh dear:

I do not know what there was in my appearance or speech which betrayedme, but I had got no further than this when the old gentleman saidsharply:

"Can you provide a copy of the register of your child's birth to showthat it is legitimate?"

What answer I made I cannot recollect, except that I told the truth in avoice with a tremor in it, for a memory of the registry office wasrolling back on me and I could feel my blushes flushing into my face. 

The result was instantaneous. The old gentleman touched a bell, drew hisspectacles down on to his nose, and said in his icy tones:

"Don't take illegitimate children if we can help it. "

It was several days before I recovered from the deep humiliation of thisexperience. Then (the exactions of the Olivers quickening my memory andat the same time deadening my pride) I remembered something which I hadheard the old actress say during my time at the boarding-house about ahospital in Bloomsbury for unfortunate children--how the good man whofounded it had been so firm in his determination that no poor mother inher sorrow should be put to further shame about her innocent child thathe had hung out a basket at the gate at night in which she could lay herlittle one, if she liked, and then ring a bell and hide herself away. 

It wasn't easy to reconcile oneself to such philanthropy, but after asleepless night, and with rather a sickening pang of mingled hope andfear, I set off for this hospital. 

It was a fine Sunday morning. The working-men in the East End weresitting at their doors smoking their pipes and reading their Sundaypapers; but when I reached the West all the church bells were ringing, and people wearing black clothes and shiny black gloves were walkingwith measured steps through the wide courtyard that led to the chapel. 

I will not say that I did not feel some qualms at entering a Protestantchurch, yet as soon as I had taken my seat and looked up at the galleryof the organ, where the children sat tier on tier, so quaint andsweet--the boys like robins in their bright red waistcoats, and thegirls like rabbits in their mob-caps with fluted frills--and the servicebegan, and the fresh young voices rose in hymns of praise to the goodFather of us all, I thought Of nothing except the joy of seeing Isabelthere some day and hearing her singing in the choir. 

When the service was over I asked for the secretary and was shown intohis room. 

I dare say he was a good man, but oh! why will so many good people wearsuch wintry weather in their faces that merely to look at them pierces apoor woman to the soul?

Apologising for the day, I told my story again (my head a little down), saying I understood that it was no barrier to a child in that orphanagethat she had been born outside the pale of the law. 

"On the contrary, " said the secretary, "that is precisely the kind ofchild this house is intended for. "

But when I went on to say that I assumed they still observed the wish ofthe founder that no questions of any kind should be asked about achild's birth or parentage, he said no, they had altered all that. Thenhe proceeded to explain that before a child could be received the mothermust now go before a committee of gentlemen to satisfy them of herprevious good character, and that the father of her baby had desertedboth of them. 

More than that, he told me that on being received the child wasimmediately re-registered and given a new name, in order that it mightbe cut off from the sin of its parents and the contamination of theirshame. 

It would be impossible for me to describe the feelings with which Ilistened to the secretary while he said all this, with the cast-metalface of a man who was utterly unconscious of the enormity of the crimehe was describing. 

"Before a committee of gentlemen?" I asked. 

"That is so. "

"Who are to ask her all those questions?"

"Yes. "

"And then they are to change her baby's name?"

"Yes. "

"Is she told what the new name is to be?"

"No, but she is given a piece of parchment containing a number whichcorresponds with the name in our books. "

I rose to my feet, flushing up to the eyes I think, trembling from headto foot I know, and, forgetting who and what I was and why I wasthere--a poor, helpless, penniless being seeking shelter for herchild--I burst out on the man in all the mad wrath of outragedmotherhood. 

"And you call this a Christian institution!" I said. "You take a poorwoman in her hour of trouble and torture her with an inquisition intothe most secret facts of her life, in public, and before a committee ofmen. And then you take her child, and so far as she is concerned youbury it, and give her a ticket to its grave. A hospital? This is nohospital. It is a cemetery. And yet you dare to write over your gatesthe words of our Lord--our holy and loving and blessed Lord--who said, 'Suffer little children. . . . '"

But what is the use of repeating what I said then (perhaps unjustly) orafterwards in the silence of my own room and the helpless intoxicationof my rage?

It was soon stamped out of me. 

By the end of another week I was driven to such despair by the continuedextortions of the Olivers that, seeing an advertisement in theUnderground Railway of a Home for children in the country (asking forsubscriptions and showing a group of happy little people playing under achestnut-tree in bloom), I decided to make one more effort. 

"They can't all be machines, " I thought, "with the founders' heartscrushed out of them. "

The day was Friday, when work was apt to heap up at the Jew's, and Mrs. Abramovitch had brought vests enough to my room to cover my bed, butnevertheless I put on my hat and coat and set out for the orphanage. 

It was fifteen miles on the north side of London, so it cost mesomething to get there. But I was encouraged by the homelike appearanceof the place when I reached it, and still more by finding that it wasconducted by women, for at last, I thought, the woman-soul would speakto me. 

But hardly had I told my story to the matron, repeating my request (verytimidly this time and with such a humble, humble heart) that I might beallowed to recover my child as soon as I found myself able to providefor her, than she stopped me and said:

"My dear young person, we could have half the orphan children in Londonon your terms. Before we accept such a child as yours we expect theparent to give us a legal undertaking that she relinquishes all rightsin it until it is sixteen years of age. "

"Sixteen? Isn't that rather severe on a mother?" I said. 

"Justly severe, " said the matron. "Such women should be made to maintaintheir children, and thus realise that the way of transgressors is hard. "

How I got back to London, whether by rail or tram or on foot, or whathappened on the way (except that darkness was settling down on me, within and without), I do not know. I only know that very late thatnight, as late as eleven o'clock, I was turning out of Park Lane intoPiccadilly, where the poor "public women" with their painted faces, dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists, were promenading infront of the gentlemen's clubs and smiling up at the windows. 

These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me; but now I wassuddenly surprised by a different feeling, and found myself thinkingthat among the women who sinned against their womanhood there might besome who sold themselves for bread to keep those they loved and wholoved them. 

This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow ringinglaugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight of stepstalking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt fronts beneaththeir overcoats showed that they were in evening dress. 

Her laughter was not natural. It had no joy in it, yet she laughed andlaughed, and feeling as if I _knew_ (because life had that day trampledon me also), I said to myself:

"That woman's heart is dead. "

This caused me to glance at her as I passed, when, catching a sideglimpse of her face, I was startled by a memory I could not fix. 

"Where and when have I seen that woman's face before?" I thought. 

It seemed impossible that I could have seen it anywhere. But the woman'sresemblance to somebody I had known, coupled with her joyless laughter, compelled me to stop at the next corner and look back. 

By this time the gentlemen, who had been treating her lightly (O God, how men treat such women!), had left her and, coming arm-in-arm in mydirection, with their silk hats tilted a little back, were saying:

"Poor old Aggie! She's off!" "Completely off!" "Is it drink, I wonder?"

And then, seeing me, they said:

"Gad, here's a nice little gal, though!" "No rouge, neither!" "By Jove, no! Her face is as white as a waterlily!"

Seeing that they were wheeling round, and fearing they were going tospeak to me, I moved back and so came face to face with the woman, whowas standing where they had left her, silent now, and looking after themen with fierce eyes under the fair hair that curled over her forehead. 

Then in a moment a memory from the far past swept over me, and I cried, almost as if the name had been forced out of me:

"Sister Angela!"

The woman started, and it seemed for a moment as if she were going torun away. Then she laid hold of me by the arm and, looking searchinglyinto my face, said:

"Who are you? . . . I know. You are Mary O'Neill, aren't you?"

"Yes. "

"I knew you were. I read about your marriage to that . . . That man. Andnow you are wondering why I am here. Well, come home with me and see. "

It was not until afterwards that I knew by what mistake about mypresence in that place Angela thought she must justify herself in myeyes (mine!); but taking me by the hand, just as she used to do when Iwas a child, she led, almost pulled, me down Piccadilly, and my will wasso broken that I did not attempt to resist her. 

We crossed Piccadilly Circus, with its white sheet of electric light, and, turning into the darker thoroughfares on the northern side of it, walked on until, in a narrow street of the Italian quarter of Soho, westopped at a private door by the side of a café that had an Italian nameon the window. 

"This is where we live. Come in, " said Angela, and I followed herthrough a long empty lobby and up three flights of bare stairs. 

While we ascended, there was the deadened sound, as from the café, ofmen singing (in throbbing voices to mandolines and guitars) one of theItalian songs which I remembered to have heard from the piazza outsidethe convent on that night when Sister Angela left me in bed while shewent off to visit the chaplain:

 "_Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato Onde sorridere volle il creato. _"

"The Italian Club, " said Angela. "Only one flight more. Come!"

ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST CHAPTER

At length Angela opened, with a key from her satchel, a door on the toplanding, and we entered a darkened room which was partly in the roof. 

As we stepped in I heard rapid breathing, which told me that we were ina sick chamber, and then a man's voice, very husky and weak, saying:

"Is that you, Agnes?"

"It's only me, dear, " said Angela. . 

After a moment she turned up the solitary gas-jet, which had beenburning low, and I saw the shadowy form of a man lying in a bed thatstood in a corner. He was wasted with consumption, his long bony handswere lying on the counterpane, his dark hair was matted over hisforehead as from sweat, but I could not mistake the large, lively greyeyes that looked out of his long thin face. It was Father Giovanni. 

Angela went up to him and kissed him, and I could see that his eyeslighted with a smile as he saw her coming into the room. 

"There's somebody with you, isn't there?" he said. 

"Yes. Who do you think it is?"

"Who?"

"Don't you remember little Margaret Mary at the Sacred Heart?"

"Is this she?"

"Yes, " said Angela, and then in a hoarse, angry voice the man said:

"What has she come here for?"

Angela told him that I had seen her on Piccadilly, and being a greatlady now, I (Oh heaven!) was one of the people who came out into thestreets at midnight to rescue lost ones. 

"She looked as if she wondered what had brought me down to that life, soI've fetched her home to see. "

I was shocked at Angela's mistake, but before I could gather strength orcourage to correct her Giovanni was raising himself in bed and saying, with a defiant air, his eyes blazing like watch-fires:

"She does it for me, if you want to know. I've been eleven monthsill--she does it all for me, I tell you. "

And then, in one of those outbursts of animation which come to thevictims of that fell disease, he gave me a rapid account of what hadhappened to them since they ran away from Rome--how at first he hadearned their living as a teacher of languages; how it became known thathe was an unfrocked and excommunicated priest who had broken his vows, and then his pupils had left him; how they had struggled on for someyears longer, though pursued by this character as by a malignant curse;and how at length his health had quite broken down, and he would havestarved but for Agnes (Angela being her nun's name), who had stuck tohim through everything. 

While the sick man said this in his husky voice, Angela was sitting onthe bed by his side with her arm about his waist, listening to him witha sort of pride and looking at me with a kind of triumph. 

"I dare say you wonder why I didn't try to get work, " she said. "I_could_ have got it if I had wanted to. I could have got it at theItalian laundry. But what was two shillings a day to a man who wasordered new milk and fresh eggs five times every twenty-four hours, notto speak of the house rent?"

"She ought to have let me die first, " said Giovanni, and then, lookingat me again with his large, glittering, fierce eyes, he said:

"_You_ think she ought to have let me die, don't you?"

"No, no, no, " I said--it was all I _could_ say, for their mistake aboutmyself was choking me. 

Perhaps my emotion appeased both of them, for after a moment Angela beatout Giovanni's pillow and straightened his counterpane, and then toldhim to lie down and be quiet, while she brought a chair for me and tookoff her things in her own bedroom. 

But hardly had she gone into an adjoining chamber when the sick manraised himself again and, reaching over in my direction, told me in ahoarse whisper the story of the first night of her present way oflife--how the doctor had said he must be removed to the hospital; howAgnes would not part with him; how the landlord had threatened to turnthem out; and how at last, after sitting with her head in her hands thewhole evening, Aggie had got up and gone out and, coming back atmidnight, had thrown two sovereigns on the table and said, "There youare, Giovanni--that's our rent and your eggs and milk for one week, anyway. "

By this time Angela had returned to the room (her paint and rouge washedoff, and her gay clothes replaced by a simple woollen jacket over aplain underskirt), and she began to beat up an egg, to boil some milk, to pour out a dose of medicine, and to do, with all a good woman's tact, a good woman's tenderness, the little services of which an invalidstands in need. 

Oh heavens, how beautiful it was--fearfully, awfully tragicallybeautiful!

I was deeply moved as I sat in silence watching her; and when at lengthGiovanni, who had been holding her hand in his own long, bony ones andsometimes putting it to his lips, dropped off to sleep (tired out, perhaps, by talking to me), and she, drawing up to where I sat by theend of the bed, resumed her self-defence, saying in a whisper thatladies like me could not possibly understand what a woman would do, inspite of herself, when the life of one she loved was threatened, I couldbear her mistake no longer, but told her of my real condition--that Iwas no longer a lady, that I had run away from my husband, that I had achild, and was living as a poor seamstress in the East End of London. 

Angela listened to my story in astonishment; and when I had come to anend she was holding my hand and looking into my eyes with just that lookwhich she had when she put me to bed for the first time at school, and, making her voice very low, told me to be a good child of the InfantJesus. 

"It's nearly one o'clock. You can't go back to the East End to-night, "she whispered. 

"Oh, I must, I must, " I said, getting up and making for the door. Butbefore I had reached it my limbs gave way, whether from the strain ofemotion or physical weakness, and if it had not been for Angela I shouldhave dropped to the floor. 

After that she would hear of no excuses. I must stay until morning. Icould sleep in her own bed in the other room, and she could lay amattress for herself on the floor by the side of Giovanni's. Therewould be no great sacrifice in that. It was going to be one ofGiovanni's bad nights, and she was likely to be up and down all the timeanyway. 

Half an hour later I was in bed in a little room that was separated by athin papered partition from the room of the poor consumptive, andAngela, who had brought me a cup of hot milk, was saying in a whisper:

"He's very bad. The doctor says he can't last longer than a week. SisterVeronica (you remember her, she's Mildred Bankes that used to be) triedto get him into a home for the dying. It was all arranged, too, but atthe last moment he wouldn't go. He told them that, if they wanted toseparate him from Agnes, they had better bring his coffin because hewould be dead before they got him to the door. "

When she had gone I lay a long time in the dark, listening to the soundson the other side of the partition. 

Giovanni awoke with an alarming fit of coughing, and in the querulous, plaintive, fretful, sometimes angry tones which invalids have, hegrumbled at Angela and then cried over her, saying what a burden he wasto her, while she, moving about the room in her bare feet, coaxed andcaressed him, and persuaded him to take his milk or his medicine. 

Through all this I would hear at intervals the drumming noises of thesinging downstairs, which sounded in my ears (as the singers werebecoming more and more intoxicated) like the swirling and screeching ofan ironical requiem for the dying man before he was dead:

 "_Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato Onde sorridere volle il creato_. "

But somewhere in those dead hours in which London sleeps everythingbecame still, and my mind, which had been questioning the grim darknesson the worst of the world's tragedies (what a woman will do for thoseshe loves), fell back on myself and I thought of the Christianinstitutions which had turned me from their doors, and then of this"street-walker" who had given up her own bed to me and was now lying inthe next room on a mattress on the floor. 

I could not help it if I felt a startling reverence for Angela, as aministering angel faithful unto death, and I remembered that as I fellasleep I was telling myself that we all needed God's mercy, God'spardon, and that, God would forgive her because she had loved much. 

But sleep was more tolerant still I dreamt that Angela died, and onreaching the gates of heaven all the saints of God met her, and afterthey had clothed her in a spotless white robe, one of them--it was theblessed Mary Magdalene--took her hand and said:

"Here is another of the holy martyrs. "

I awoke from that dream with beads of perspiration on my forehead. But Idare not say what confused and terrible thoughts came next, except thatthey were about baby--what I might do myself if driven to the lastextremity. When I slept and dreamt again, it was I who was dead, and itwas my darling mother who met me and took me to the feet of the BlessedVirgin and said:

"Mother of all Mothers, who knows all that is in a mother's heart, thisis my little daughter. She did not intend to do wrong. It was all forthe sake of her child. "

When I awoke in the morning, with the darkness shivering off through thegloom, this last dream was sitting upon me like a nightmare. Itterrified me. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a precipiceand some awful forces were trying to push me over it. 

The London sparrows were chirping on the skylight over my head, and Icould faintly hear the Italian criers in the front street:

"Latte!" "Spazzina!" "Erbaggi freschi!"

In spite of myself (hating myself for it after all the tenderness thathad been shown me), I could not overcome a feeling of shame at findingmyself lying where I was, and I got up to run away that I might cleansemy soul of the evil thoughts which had come to me while there. 

As I dressed I listened for a sound from the adjoining room. All wasquiet now. The poor restless ones were at last getting a little rest. 

A few minutes afterwards I passed on tiptoe through their room withoutlooking towards the bed, and reaching the door to the staircase I openedit as noiselessly as I could. 

Then I closed it softly after me, on so much suffering and so much love. 

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 nightbefore. 

I was on my way to that church among the mews of Mayfair to which I hadgone so frequently during the early days of my marriage when I wasstruggling against the mortal sin (as I thought it was) of lovingMartin. 

Just as I reached the church and was ascending the steps, a gorgeouslandau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman drew up at thebottom of them. 

The carriage, which bore a coronet on the door, contained a lady in longfurs, a rosy-faced baby-girl in squirrel skins with a large doll in herarms, and a nurse. 

I could see that, like myself, the lady (a young mother) had come toconfess, for as she rose from her seat she told the child to sit quietand be good and she would not keep her long. 

"Tum out soon, mummy, and dolly will lub you eber and eber, " said thechild. 

The lady stooped and kissed the little one, and then, with a proud andhappy look, stepped out of the carriage and passed into the church, while the door-keeper opened the vestibule door for her and boweddeeply. 

I stood at the top of the steps for a moment looking back at thecarriage, the horses, the footman, the nurse, and, above all, thebaby-girl with her doll, and then followed the lady into the church. 

Apparently mass was just over. Little spirelets of smoke were risingfrom the candles on the altar which the sacristan was putting out, a fewcommunicants were still on their knees, and others with light yetechoing footsteps were making for the door. 

The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the confessionalboxes, 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 maybewail my sins and rightly confess them_. "

But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in thedaylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I couldnot do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with thecoroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses. 

She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closedeyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given upeverything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury. 

God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought Ihad made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I sawmyself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural conditionand 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-facedchild in the carriage, and then of my own darling at Mrs. Oliver's as Ihad seen her last, so thin and pale, and with her little bib stained byher curdled milk, a feeling I had never had before pierced to my verysoul. 

I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and permitted--thatbecause I had obeyed what I still believed to be the purest impulse ofmy nature, love, my child must be made to suffer. 

Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself that what Ihad 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 myRedeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me. 

"_Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my sins to thepriest, thy Vicar_. "

It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what I hadintended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night before wasvanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting my head, lookedboldly 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 atthe 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 acry. Then the priest parted his curtains and beckoned to me, and I movedacross and stood stubbornly by the perforated brass grating. 

"Father, " I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was fluttering, "Icame here to make my confession, but something has come over me since Ientered 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 akind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and pities thesufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong and false. _Goddoes not care_. "

The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of silencehe said in a quivering voice:

"My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the deviltempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in your ear, atthis moment. "

I shuddered, and the priest added:

"I see how it is, my daughter. You are suffering, and those you love aresuffering too. But must you surrender your faith on that account? Lookround at the pictures on these walls [the Stations of the Cross]. Thinkof the Great Sufferer, the Great Martyr, who in the hour of His death, at the malicious power of the world, cried, '_Eloi, Eloi, lamasabachthani_: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"

I had dropped to my knees by now, my head was down, and my hands wereclasped together. 

"You are wrong, my child, if you think God does not care for you becauseHe allows you to suffer. Are you rich? Are you prosperous? Have youevery earthly blessing? Then beware, for Satan is watching for yoursoul. But are you poor? Are you going through unmerited trouble? Haveyou lost some one who was dearer to you than your heart of hearts? Thentake courage, for our holy and blessed Saviour has marked you for Hisown. "

I know nothing of that priest except his whispering voice, which, comingthrough the grating of the confessional, produced the effect of thesupernatural, but I thought then, and I think now, that he must havebeen a great as well as a good man. 

I perfectly recollect that, when I left the church and passed into thestreets, it seemed as if his spirit went with me and built up in my soula resolution that was bright with heavenly tears and sunshine. 

Work! Work! Work! I should work still harder than before. No matter howmean, ill-paid, and uncongenial my work might be, I should work all dayand all night if necessary. And since I had failed to get my child intoan 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 theEast End were crowded and the narrower streets full of life, the Jew'shouse was silent, for it was the Jewish Sabbath. 

As I went hurriedly upstairs I heard the Jew himself, who was dressingfor the synagogue, singing his Sabbath hymn: _Lerho daudee likraskollo_--"Come, O friend, let us go forth to meet the Bride, let usreceive the Sabbath with joy!"

Then came a shock. 

When I reached my room I found, to my dismay, that the pile of vestswhich 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 thestair, and knew that her husband was coming up to me. 

A moment afterwards the Jew stood in my doorway. He was dressed in hisSabbath suit and, free from the incongruous indications of his homelycalling, the patriarchal appearance which had first struck me was evenmore marked than before. His face was pale, his expression was severe, and if his tongue betrayed the broken English of the Polish Jew, I, inmy confusion and fear, did not notice it then. 

My first thought was that he had come to reprove me for neglecting mywork, and I was prepared to promise to make up for my absence. But at asecond glance I saw that something had happened, something had becomeknown, and that he was there to condemn and denounce me. 

"You have been out all night, " he said. "Can you tell me where you havebeen?"

I knew I could not, and though it flashed upon me to say that I hadslept at the house of a friend, I saw that, if he asked who my friendwas, 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 ourknowledge?"

I felt myself gasping, but still I did not speak. 

"Can you say that it was lawfully born according to your Christianmarriage?"

I felt the colour flushing into my face but I was still silent; andafter a moment in which, as I could see, the stern-natured Jew wassumming me up as a woman of double life and evil character, he said:

"Then it is true? . . . Very well, you will understand that from thisday you cease to be in my service. "

All this time my eyes were down, but I was aware that somebody else hadcome into the room. It was Miriam, and she was trying to plead for me. 

"Father . . . " she began, but, turning hotly upon her, the Jew criedpassionately:

"Go away! A true daughter of Israel should know better than to speak forsuch 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 mychild. "

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. OnShobbos 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, andis the adulterous mother of a misbegotten child. If she were a Jewishwoman she would be summoned before the Beth Din, and in better days ourlaw of Moses would have stoned her. Shall she, because she is aChristian, dishonour a good Jewish house? No! The hand of the Lord wouldgo 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 totemper 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 downthe stairs. His wife stayed a little longer, saying something in a kindvoice, 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 Jewhad left me. After a while I heard him closing and locking the door ofhis own apartment, and knew that he was going off to his synagogue inBrick Lane in his tall silk hat worn on the back of his head like askull-cap, and with his wife and daughter behind him, carrying hisleather-bound prayer-book. 

I hardly knew what else was happening. My heart was heaving like a deadbody on a billow. All that the priest had said was gone. In its placethere was a paralysing despair as if the wheels of life were rollingover me. 

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My dear, long-suffering, martyred darling!

It makes my blood boil to see how the very powers of darkness, in thename of religion, morality, philanthropy and the judgment of God, werepersecuting 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 ofthe Mediterranean the indefinable sense of her danger never left me dayor night. 

That old dream of the glacier and the precipice continued to haunt mysleep, with the difference that, instead of the aurora glistening in mydear one's eyes, there was now a blizzard behind her. 

The miserable thing so tortured me as we approached Malta (where Iexpected to receive a reply to the cable I had sent from Port Said tothe house of Daniel O'Neill) that I felt physically weak at the thoughtof the joy or sorrow ahead of me. 

Though there was no telegram from my darling at Malta, there was onefrom the chairman of my committee, saying he was coming to Marseilles tomeet our steamer and would sail the rest of the way home with us. 

Indirectly this brought me a certain comfort. It reminded me of theletter 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 theinterval, and I had never thought of that letter before. 

It was not to her father, as she supposed, and certainly not to herhusband. It was to my chairman, asking him, in the event of my darlingsending it on, to do whatever was necessary to protect her during myabsence. 

If my chairman had not received that letter, my conclusion would be thatmy dear little woman had never been reduced to such straits as torequire help from any one. If he had in fact received it, he must havedone what I wished, and therefore everything would be well. 

There was a certain suspense as well as a certain consolation in allthis, and before our big ship slowed down at Marseilles I was on decksearching 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 ifhe 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 tothe 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 shipmateswho were standing round with shining eyes say, "Aye, aye, sir, " and thenone of them (it was good old O'Sullivan) shouted:

"By the stars of heaven, that's thrue, my lord! And if anybody's aftersaying that the Commanther was turned back this time by anything lessthan the almighty power of Nature in her wrath, you may say there'sforty-eight of us here to tell him he lies. "

"I believe it, " said the chairman, and then there were furthercongratulations, with messages from members of my committee, but never aword from my dear one. 

Thinking the chairman might hesitate to speak of a private matter untilwe were alone, I took him down to my state-room. But he had nothing tosay there, either, except about articles to be written, reports to becompiled, and invitations to be accepted. 

Several hours passed like this. We were again out at sea, and my longingto know what had happened was consuming me, but I dared not ask fromfear of a bad answer. 

Before the night was out, however, I had gone to work in a roundaboutway. Taking O'Sullivan into my confidence, I told him it had not been myparents that I had been anxious about (God forgive me!), but somebodyelse 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 theletter 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 yethaving heard from his mother), so he fell readily into my plan, whichwas that of cross-questioning the chairman about my dear one, and Iabout his, and then meeting secretly and imparting what we had learned. 

Anybody may laugh who likes at the thought of two big lumbering fellowsafraid to face the truth (scouting round and round it), but it grips meby the throat to this day to see myself taking our chairman into a quietcorner of the smoke-room and saying:

"Poor old O'Sullivan! He hasn't heard from his old mother yet. She wassick when he sailed, and wouldn't have parted with him to go withanybody 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 goodheart, isn't he? But it's just destroyed he is for want of news of agreat 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) Iasked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and heanswered "No, " I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I didnot know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began to feel thatshe 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 withoutasking help of any one. 

This quite crushed down my heart, for, seeing that she had sent no replyto my cables, I could not find any escape from the conclusion that shewas where no word could come from her--she was dead!

Lord God, how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I used towalk up and down the promenade deck late into the night, trying andcondemning 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 onearth or ever expect to see, and it wouldn't be necessary to speak of itnow but for the glorious confidence it brought me. 

It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom Providence comesto relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix the place of mine ascertainly 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 wassplendid) and were running along the coast of Portugal. 

It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember. While myshipmates were making cheerful times of it in the smoke-room (O'Sullivanwith heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel Boy" to a chorus of noisycheers) I was walking up and down the deck with my little stock ofcourage 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 saythat you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have been hurriedhome without the loss of a moment, only to find everything over at theend of your journey? No, no, no! Your poor, dear, heroic little woman isalive! 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 thesoul and lift you into a world which you don't naturally belong to. Thiswas one of them. 

Never after that did I feel one moment's real anxiety. I was my own manonce more; and though I continued to walk the deck while our good shipsped along in the night, it was only because there was a kind of wildharmony between the mighty voice of the rolling billows of the Bay andthe unheard anthem of boundless hope that was singing in my breast. 

I recollect that during my walk a hymn was always haunting me. It wasthe same that we used to sing in the shuddering darkness of thatperpetual night, when we stood (fifty downhearted men) under the shelterof our snow camp, with a ninety mile blizzard shrieking above us:

 "_Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on_. "

But the light was within me now, and I knew as certainly as that thegood ship was under my feet that I was being carried home at the call ofthe Spirit to rescue my stricken darling. 

God keep her on her solitary way! England! England! England! Less than aweek and I should be there!

That was early hours on Saturday morning--the very Saturday when my poorlittle woman, after she had been turned away by those pratingphilanthropists, was being sheltered by the prostitute. 

Let him explain it who can. I cannot. 

M. C. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD CHAPTER

I must have been sitting a full hour or more on the end of mybed--stunned, stupefied, unable to think--when Miriam, back from thesynagogue, came stealthily upstairs to say that a messenger had come forme about six o'clock the night before. 

"He said his name was Oliver, and father saw him, and that's how he cameto know. 'Tell her that her child is ill, and she is to comeimmediately, ' he said. "

I was hardly conscious of what happened next--hardly aware of passingthrough the streets to Ilford. I had a sense of houses flying by as theyseem to do from an express train; of my knees trembling; of my throattightening; and of my whole soul crying out to God to save the life ofmy child until I could get to her. 

When I reached the house of the Olivers the worst of my fears wererelieved. Mrs. Oliver was sitting before the fire with baby on her lap. 

At sight of me the woman began to mumble out something about my delay, and how she could not be held responsible if anything happened; butcaring nothing about responsibility, hers or mine, I took baby from herwithout more words. 

My child was in a state of deep drowsiness, and when I tried to rouseher I could not do so. I gathered that this condition had lastedtwenty-four hours, during which she had taken no nourishment, with theresult that she was now very thin. 

I knew nothing of children's ailments but a motherly instinct must havecome to my aid, for I called for a bath, and bathed baby, and she awoke, and then took a little food. 

But again she dropped back into the drowsy condition, and Mrs. Oliver, who was alarmed, called in some of the neighbours to look at her. 

Apparently the mission of the good women was to comfort Mrs. Oliver, notme, but they said, "Sleep never did no harm to nobody, " and I found acertain consolation in that. 

Hours passed. I was barely sensible of anything that happened beyond thenarrow circle of my own lap, but at one moment I heard the squirling ofa brass band that was going up the street, with the shuffling of anirregular procession. 

"It's the strike, " said Mrs. Oliver, running to the window. "There'sTed, carrying a banner. "

A little later I heard the confused noises of a strike meeting, whichwas being held on the Green. It was like the croaking of a frog-pond, with now and then a strident voice (the bricklayer's) crying "Buckleyour belts tighter, and starve rather than give in, boys. " Still later Iheard the procession going away, singing with a slashing sound that waslike driving wind and pelting rain:

 "_The land, the land, the blessed, blessed land, Gawd gave the land to the people_. "

But nothing awakened baby, and towards three in the afternoon (the ideathat she was really ill having taken complete possession of me) I askedwhere I could find the nearest doctor, and being told, I went off insearch of him. 

The doctor was on his rounds, so I left a written message indicatingbaby's symptoms and begging him to come to her immediately. 

On the way back I passed a number of children's funerals--easilyrecognisable by the combined coach and hearse, the white linen "weepers"worn by the coachman and his assistant, and the little coffin, sprinkledwith cheap flowers, in the glass case behind the driver's seat. Thesesights, which brought back a memory of the woman who carried my babydown the Mile End Road, almost deprived me of my senses. 

I had hardly got back and taken off my coat and warmed my hands anddress by the fire before taking baby in my lap, when the doctor, in hisgig, pulled up at the door. 

He was a young man, but he seemed to take in the situation in a moment. I was the mother, wasn't I? Yes. And this woman was baby's nurse? Yes. 

Then he drew up a chair and looked steadfastly down at baby, and I wentthrough that breathless moment, which most of us know, when we arewaiting for the doctor's first word. 

"Some acute digestive trouble here apparently, " he said, and thensomething about finding out the cause of it. 

But hardly had he put his hands on my child as she lay in my lap thanthere came a faintly discoloured vomit. 

"What have you been giving her?" he said, looking round at Mrs. Oliver. 

Mrs. Oliver protested that she had given baby nothing except her milk, but the doctor said sharply:

"Don't talk nonsense, woman. Show me what you've given her. "

Then Mrs. Oliver, looking frightened, went upstairs and brought down abottle of medicine, saying it was a soothing syrup which I had myselfbought for baby's cough. 

"As I thought!" said the doctor, and going to the door and opening it, he flung the bottle on to the waste ground opposite, saying as he didso:

"If I hear of you giving your babies any more of your soothing syrupI'll see what the Inspector has to say. "

After that, ignoring nurse, he asked me some searching and intimatequestions--if I had had a great grief or shock or worry while baby wascoming, and whether and how long I had nursed her. 

I answered as truthfully as I could, though I saw the drift of hisinquiries, and was trembling with fear of what he would tell me next. 

He said nothing then, however, except to make his recommendations. Andremembering my loss of work, my heart sank as he enumerated baby'sneeds--fresh cow's milk diluted with lime water, small quantities ofmeat juice, and twenty to thirty drops of the best brandy three or fourtimes a day. 

When he rose to go I paid his fee. It was only half-a-crown, but hecannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was leaving thekitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning if there were achange in the symptoms. 

Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was tremblingin terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and followed the doctorto the door. 

"Doctor, " I said, "is my baby very ill?"

He hesitated for a moment and then answered, "Yes. "

"Dangerously ill?"

Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my lower liptrembling) he said:

"I won't say that. She's suffering from marasmus, provoked by overdosesof the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and unscrupulouspeople to a restless child to keep it quiet. But her real trouble comesof maternal weakness, and the only cure for that is good nourishment andabove all fresh air and sunshine. "

"Will she get better?"

"If you can take her away, into the country she will, certainly. "

"And if . . . If I can't, " I asked, the words fluttering up to my lips, "will she . . . _die_?"

The doctor looked steadfastly at me again (I was biting my lip to keepit firm), and said:

"She _may_. "

When I returned to the kitchen I knew that I was face to face withanother of the great mysteries of a woman's life--Death--the death of mychild, which my very love and tenderness had exposed her to. 

Meantime Mrs. Oliver, who was as white as a whitewashed wall, wasexcusing herself in a whining voice that had the sound of a spent wave. She wouldn't have hurt the pore dear precious for worlds, and if ithadn't been for Ted, who was so tired at night and wanted sleep afterwalking in percession. . . . 

Partly to get rid of the woman I sent her out (with almost the last ofmy money) for some of the things ordered by the doctor. While she wasaway, and I was looking down at the little silent face on my lap, praying for one more glimpse of my Martin's sea-blue eyes, thebricklayer came lunging into the house. 

"Where's Lizer?" he said. 

I told him and he cried:

"The baiby again! Allus the baiby!"

With that he took out of his pocket a cake of moist tobacco, cut androlled some of it in his palm, and then charged his pipe and litit--filling the air with clouds of rank smoke, which made baby bark andcough without rousing her. 

I pointed this out to him and asked him not to smoke. 

"Eh?" he said, and then I told him that the doctor had been called andwhat he had said about fresh air. 

"So that's it, is it?" he said. "Good! Just reminds me of something Iwant to say, so I'll introdooce the matter now, in a manner o' speaking. Last night I 'ad to go to Mile End for you, and here's Lizer out on asim'lar arrand. If people 'ave got to be 'ospital nurses to a sick baibythey ought to be paid, mind ye. We're only pore, and it may be a sacreddooty walkin' in percession, but it ain't fillin'. "

Choking with anger, I said:

"Put out your pipe, please. "

"Ma'am to _you_!"

"Put it out this moment, sir, or I'll see if I can't find somebody tomake you. "

The bricklayer laughed, then pointed with the shank of his pipe to thetwo photographs over the mantelpiece, and said:

"See them? Them's me, with my dooks up. If any friend o' yourn as isinterested in the baiby comes to lay a 'and on me I'll see if I'veforgot 'ow to use 'em. "

I felt the colour shuddering out of my cheeks, and putting baby into thecot I turned on the man and cried:

"You scoundrel! The doctor has told me what is the immediate cause of mybaby's illness and your wife has confessed to giving overdoses of adrug at your direction. If you don't leave this house in one minute I'llgo straight to the police-station and charge you with poisoning mychild. "

The bully in the coward was cowed in a moment. 

"Don't get 'uffy, ma'am, " he said. "I'm the peaceablest man in the EastEnd, and if I mentioned anything about a friend o' yourn it slipped outin the 'eat of the moment--see?"

"Out you go! Go! Go!" I cried, and, incredible as it may seem, the manwent flying before my face as if I had been a fury. 

It would be a long tale to tell of what happened the day following, thenext and the next and the next--how baby became less drowsy, but morerestless; how being unable to retain her food she grew thinner andthinner; how I wished to send for the doctor, but dared not do so fromfear of his fee; how the little money I had left was barely sufficientto buy the food and stimulants which were necessary to baby's cure: howI sat for long hours with my little lamb on my lap straining my dry eyesinto her face; and how I cried to God for the life of my child, whichwas everything I had or wanted. 

All this time I was still lodging at the Jew's, returning to it lateevery night, and leaving it early in the morning, but nothing happenedthere that seemed to me of the smallest consequence. One day Miriam, looking at me with her big black eyes, said:

"You must take more rest, dear, or you will make yourself ill. "

"No, no, I am not ill, " I answered, and then remembering how necessarymy life was to the life of my child, I said, "I must not be ill. "

At last on the Saturday morning--I know now it must have been Saturday, but time did not count with me then--I overheard Mrs. Abramovitchpleading for me with her husband, saying they knew I was in trouble andtherefore I ought to have more time to find lodging, another week--threedays at all events. But the stern-natured man with his rigid religionwas inexorable. It was God's will that I should be punished, and who washe to step in between the All-high and his just retribution?

"The woman is displeasing to God, " he said, and then he declared that, the day being Sabbath (the two tall candlesticks and the Sabbath loavesmust have been under his eyes at the moment), he would give me untilnine o'clock that night, and if I had not moved out by that time hewould put my belongings into the street. 

I remember that the Jew's threat made no impression upon my mind. Itmattered very little to me where I was to lodge next week or what roofwas to cover me. 

When I reached the Olivers' that morning I found baby distinctly worse. Even the brandy would not stay on her stomach and hence her strength wasplainly diminishing. I sat for some time looking steadfastly into mychild's face, and then I asked myself, as millions of mothers must havedone before me, why my baby should suffer so. Why? Why? Why?

There seemed to be no answer to that question except one. Baby wassuffering because I was poor. If I had not been poor I could have takenher into the country for fresh air and sunshine, where she would haverecovered as the doctor had so confidently assured me. 

And why was I poor? I was poor because I had refused to be enslaved bymy father's authority when it was vain and wrong, or my husband's whenit, was gross and cruel, and because I had obeyed the highest that wasin me--the call of love. 

And now God looked down on the sufferings of my baby, who was beingkilled for my conduct--killed by my poverty!

I tremble to say what wild impulses came at that thought. I felt that ifmy baby died and I ever stood before God to be judged I should judge Himin return. I should ask Him why, if He were Almighty, He permitted theevil in the world to triumph over the good, and if He were our heavenlyFather why He allowed innocent children to suffer? Was there any _human_father who could be so callous, so neglectful, so cruel, as that?

I dare say it was a terrible thing to bring God to the bar of judgment, to be judged by His poor weak ignorant creature; but it was alsoterrible to sit with a dying baby on my lap (I thought mine was dying), and to feel that there was nothing--not one thing--I could do to relieveits sufferings. 

My faith went down like a flood during the heavy hours of that day--allthat I had been taught to believe about God's goodness and themarvellous efficacy of the Sacraments of His Church. 

I thought of the Sacrament of my marriage, which the Pope told me hadbeen sanctioned by my Redeemer under a natural law that those whoentered into it might live together in peace and love--and then of myhusband and his brutal infidelities. 

I thought of the Sacrament of my baby's baptism, which was to exorciseall the devils out of my child--and then of the worst devil in theworld, poverty, which was taking her very life. 

After that a dark shadow crossed my soul, and I told myself that sinceGod was doing nothing, since He was allowing my only treasure to be tornaway from me, I would fight for my child's life as any animal fights forher young. 

By this time a new kind of despair had taken hold of me. It was nolonger the paralysing despair but the despair that has a driving forcein it. 

"My child shall not die, " I thought. "At least poverty shall not killher!"

Many times during the day I had heard Mrs. Oliver trying to comfort mewith various forms of sloppy sentiment. Children were a great trial, they were allus makin' and keepin' people pore, and it was sometimesbetter for the dears themselves to be in their 'eavenly Father's boosim. 

I hardly listened. It was the same as if somebody were talking to me inmy sleep. But towards nightfall my deaf ear caught something aboutmyself--that "it" (I knew what that meant) might be better for me, also, for then I should be free of encumbrances and could marry again. 

"Of course you could--you so young and good-lookin'. Only the other daythe person at number five could tell me as you were the prettiest womanas comes up the Row, and the Vicar's wife couldn't hold a candle to you. 'Fine feathers makes fine birds, ' says she: 'Give your young lady a nicefrock and a bit o' colour in her checks, and there ain't many as couldbest her in the West End neither. '"

As the woman talked dark thoughts took possession of me. I began tothink of Angela. I tried not to, but I could not help it. 

And then came the moment of _my_ fiercest trial. With a sense of Deathhanging over my child I told myself that the only way to drive it offwas to make _some great sacrifice_. 

Hitherto I had thought of everything I possessed as belonging to baby, but now I felt that _I myself_ belonged to her. I had brought her intothe world, and it was my duty to see that she did not suffer. 

All this time the inherited instinct of my religion was fighting hardwith me, and I was saying many Hail Marys to prevent myself from doingwhat I meant to do. 

"_Hail, Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee_ . . . "

I felt as if I were losing my reason. But it was of no use strugglingagainst the awful impulse of self-sacrifice (for such I thought it)which had taken hold of my mind, and at last it conquered me. 

"I must get money, " I thought. "Unless I get money my child will die. I--must--get--money. "

Towards seven o'clock I got up, gave baby to Mrs. Oliver, put on my coatand fixed with nervous fingers my hat and hatpins. 

"Where are you going to, pore thing?" asked Mrs. Oliver. 

"I am going out. I'll be back in the morning, " I answered. 

And then, after kneeling and kissing my baby again--my sweet child, myIsabel--I tore the street door open, and pulled it noisily behind me. 

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH CHAPTER

On reaching the front street, I may have taken the penny tram, forthough I had a sense of growing blind and deaf I have vague memories oflights flashing past me and of the clanging of electric cars. 

At Bow Church I must have got out (probably to save a further fare)because I recollect walking along the Bow Road between the lights in theshops and the coarse flares from the stalls on the edge of the pavement, where women with baskets on their arms were doing their Saturday night'sshopping. 

My heart was still strong (sharpened indeed into, poignancy) and I knowI was not crying, for at one moment as I passed the mirror in achemist's window I caught sight of my face and it was fierce as flame. 

At another moment, while I was hurrying along, I collided with a drunkenwoman who was coming out of a public-house with her arm about the neckof a drunken sailor. 

"Gawd! Here's the Verging Mary agine!" she cried. 

It was the woman who had carried baby, and when I tried to hurry pasther she said:

"You think I'm drunk, don't you, dear? So'am. Don't you never get drunk?No? What a bleedin' fool you are! Want to get out o' this 'ere 'ole?Tike my tip then--gettin' drunk's on'y way out of it. "

Farther on I had to steer my way through jostling companies of youngpeople of both sexes who were going (I thought) the same way as thewoman--girls out of the factories with their free walk, and theirboisterous "fellers" from the breweries. 

It was a cold and savage night. As I approached the side street in whichI lived I saw by the light of the arc lamps a small group of people, ashivering straggle of audience, with the hunched-up shoulders of beingsthinly clad and badly fed, standing in stupid silence at the cornerwhile two persons wearing blue uniforms (a man in a peaked cap and ayoung woman in a poke bonnet) sang a Salvation hymn of which the refrainwas "It is well, it is well with my soul. "

The door of the Jew's house was shut (for the first time in myexperience), so I had to knock and wait, and while I waited I could nothelp but hear the young woman in the poke bonnet pray. 

Her prayer was about "raising the standard of Calvary, " and making thedrunkards and harlots of the East End into "seekers" and "soul yielders"and "prisoners of the King of Kings. "

Before the last words of the prayer were finished the man in the peakedcap tossed up his voice in another hymn, and the young woman joined himwith an accordion:

 "_Shall we gather at the river, Where bright angel feet have trod_. . . . "

The door was opened by the Jew himself, who, assuming a severe manner, said something to me in his guttural voice which I did not hear or heed, for I pushed past him and walked firmly upstairs. 

When I had reached my room and lit the gas, I closed and locked thedoor, as if I were preparing to commit a crime--and perhaps I was. 

I did not allow myself to think of what I intended to do that night, butI knew quite well, and when at one moment my conscience pressed me hardsomething cried out in my heart:

"Who can blame me since my child's life is in danger?"

I opened my trunk and took out my clothes--all that remained of thedresses I had brought from Ellan. They were few, and more than a littleout of fashion, but one of them, though far from gay, was bright andstylish--a light blue frock with a high collar and some white lace overthe bosom. 

I remember wondering why I had not thought of pawning it during theweek, when I had had so much need of money, and then being glad that Ihad not done so. 

It was thin and light, being the dress I had worn on the day I firstcame to the East End, carrying my baby to Ilford, when the weather waswarm which now was cold; but I paid no heed to that, thinking only thatit was my best and most attractive. 

After I had put it on and glanced at myself in my little swinginglooking-glass I was pleased, but I saw at the same time that my face wasdeadly pale, and that made me think of some bottles and cardboard boxeswhich lay in the pockets of my trunk. 

I knew what they contained--the remains of the cosmetics which I hadbought in Cairo in the foolish days when I was trying to make my husbandlove me. Never since then had I looked at them, but now I took them out(with a hare's foot and some pads and brushes) and began to paint mypale face--reddening my cracked and colourless lips and powdering outthe dark rings under my eyes. 

While I was doing this I heard (though I was trying not to) the deadenedsound of the singing in the front street, with the young woman's treblevoice above the man's bass and the wheezing of the accordion:

 "_Yes, we'll gather, at the river, Where bright angel feet have trod, With its, crystal tide for ever Flowing by the throne of God_. "

The Dark Spirit must have taken possession of me by this time, poorvessel of conflicting passions as I was, for I remember that while Ilistened I laughed--thinking what mockery was to sing of "angel feet"and "crystal tides" to those shivering wretches at the corner of theLondon street in the smoky night air. 

"What a farce!" I thought. "What a heartless farce!"

Then I put on my hat, which was also not very gay, and taking out of mytrunk a pair of long light gloves which I had never worn since I leftEllan, I began to pull them on. 

I was standing before the looking-glass in the act of doing this, andtrying (God pity me!) to smile at myself, when I was suddenly smitten bya new thought. 

I was about to commit suicide--the worst kind of suicide, not thesuicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on earth afterdeath!

After that night Mary O'Neill would no longer exist! I should never heable to think of her again! I should have killed her and buried her andstamped the earth down on her and she would be gone from me for ever!

That made a grip at my heart--awakening memories of happy days in mychildhood, bringing back the wild bliss of the short period of my greatlove, and even making me think of my life in Rome, with its confessions, its masses, and the sweetness of its church bells. 

I was saying farewell to Mary O'Neill! And parting with oneself seemedso terrible that when I thought of it my heart seemed ready to burst. 

"But who can blame me when my child's life is in danger?" I asked myselfagain, still tugging at my long gloves. 

By the time I had finished dressing the Salvationists were going off totheir barracks with their followers behind them. Under the singing Icould faintly hear the shuffling of bad shoes, which made a sound likethe wash of an ebbing tide over the teeth of a rocky beach--up our sidestreet, past the Women's Night Shelter (where the beds never had time tobecome cool), and beyond the public-house with the placard in the windowsaying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to make anybody drunk forfourpence. 

 "_We'll stand the storm, it won't be long, And we'll anchor in the sweet by-and-by_. "

I listened and tried to laugh again, but I could not do so now. Therewas one last spasm of my cruelly palpitating heart, in which I coveredmy face with both hands, and cried:

"For baby's sake! For my baby's sake!"

And then I opened my bedroom door, walked boldly downstairs and went outinto the streets. 

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

I don't call it Chance that this was the very day of my return toEngland. 

If I had to believe that, I should have to disbelieve half of what isbest in the human story, and the whole of what we are taught about aguiding Providence and the spiritual influences which we cannot reasonabout and prove. 

We were two days late arriving, having made dirty weather of it in theBay of Biscay, which injured our propeller and compelled us to lie to, so I will not say that the sense of certainty which came to me offFinisterre did not suffer a certain shock. 

In fact the pangs of uncertainty grew so strongly upon me as we nearedhome that in the middle of the last night of our voyage I went toO'Sullivan's cabin, and sat on the side of his bunk for hours, talkingof the chances of my darling being lost and of the possibility offinding her. 

O'Sullivan, God bless him, was "certain sure" that everything would beright, and he tried to take things gaily. 

"The way I'm knowing she'll be at Southampton in a new hat and feather!So mind yer oi, Commanther. "

We passed the Channel Islands in the spring of morning, and atbreakfast-time we picked up the pilot, who had brought out a group ofreporters. I did my best for the good chaps (though it is mighty hard totalk about exploring when you are thinking of another subject), and thenhanded them over to my shipmates. 

Towards seven o'clock at night we heaved up to the grey stone pier atthe head of Southampton Water. It was then dark, so being unable to seemore than the black forms and waving hands of the crowd waiting for uswith the lights behind them, I arranged with O'Sullivan that he shouldslip ashore as soon as we got alongside, and see if he could find mydear one. 

"Will you remember her face?" I asked. 

"And why wouldn't I? By the stars of God, there's only one of it in theworld, " he answered. 

The welcome we got when we were brought to was enough to make a vain manproud, and a modest one ashamed, and perhaps I should have had a littleof both feelings if the right woman had been there to share them. 

My state-room was on the promenade deck, and I stood at the door of itas long as I dared, raising my cap at the call of my name, but feelingas if I were the loneliest man in the world, God help me!

O'Sullivan had not returned when Treacle came to say that everything wasready, and it was time to go ashore. 

I will not say that I was not happy to be home; I will not pretend thatthe warm-hearted welcome did not touch me; but God knows there was amoment when, for want of a face I did not see, I could have turned aboutand gone back to the South Pole there and then, without an instant'shesitation. 

When I got ashore I had as much as I could do to stand four-square tothe storm of hand-shaking that fell on me. And perhaps if I had been inbetter trim I should have found lots of fun in the boyish delight of myshipmates in being back, with old Treacle shaking hands with everybodyfrom the Mayor of the town to the messenger-boys (crying "What cheer, matey?"), while the scientific staff were bringing up their wives to beintroduced to me, just as the lower-form fellows used to do with theirbig sisters at school. 

At last O'Sullivan came back with a long face to say he could seenothing of my dear one, and then I braced myself and said:

"Never mind! She'll be waiting for us in London perhaps. "

It took a shocking time to pass through the Customs, but we got off atlast in a special train commissioned by our chairman--half of ourcompany with their wives and a good many reporters having crammedthemselves into the big saloon carriage reserved for me. 

At the last moment somebody threw a sheaf of evening papers through mywindow, and as soon as we were well away I took up one of them and triedto read it, but column after column fell blank on my eyes, for my mindwas full of other matters. 

The talk in the carriage, too, did not interest me in the least. It wasabout the big, hustling, resonant world, general elections, the fall ofministries, Acts of Parliament, and the Lord knows what--things that hadlooked important when we were in the dumb solitude of Winter Quarters, but seemed to be of no account now when I was hungering for somethingelse. 

At last I got a quiet pressman in a corner and questioned him aboutEllan. 

"That's my native island, you know--anything going on there?"

The reporter said yes, there was some commotion about the failure ofbanks, with the whole island under a cloud, and its biggest financialman gone smash. 

"Is his name O'Neill?" I asked. 

"That's it. "

"Anything else happened there while I've been away?"

"No . . . Yes . . . Well, now that I think of it, there was a big scarea year or so ago about a young peeress who disappeared mysteriously. "

"Was . . . Was it Lady Raa?"

"Yes, " said the reporter, and then (controlling myself as well as Icould) I listened to a rapid version of what had become known about mydear one down to the moment when she "vanished as utterly as if she hadbeen dropped into the middle of the Irish Sea. "

It is of no use saying what I felt after that, except that flying in anexpress train to London, I was as impatient of space and time as if Ihad been in a ship down south stuck fast in the rigid besetment of theice. 

I could not talk, and I dared not think, so I shouted for a sing-song, and my shipmates (who had been a little low at seeing me so silent)jumped at the proposal like schoolboys let loose from school. 

Of course O'Sullivan gave us "The Minsthrel Boy"; and Treacle sang "Yeware the enny"; and then I, yes I (Oh, God!), sang "Sally's the gel, " andevery man of my company joined in the ridiculous chorus. 

Towards ten o'clock we changed lines on the loop at Waterloo and raninto Charing Cross, where we found another and still bigger crowd ofhearty people behind a barrier, with a group of my committee, my fellowexplorers, and geographers in general, waiting on the platform. 

I could not help it if I made a poor return to their warm-heartedcongratulations, for my eyes were once more searching for a face Icould not see, so that I was glad and relieved when I heard thesuperintendent say that the motor-car that was to take me to the hotelwas ready and waiting. 

But just then O'Sullivan came up and whispered that a priest and a nunwere asking to speak to me, and he believed they had news of Mary. 

The priest proved to be dear old Father Dan, and the nun to be SisterVeronica, whom my dear one calls Mildred. At the first sight of theirsad-joyful faces something gripped me by the throat, for I knew whatthey had come to say before they said it--that my darling was lost, andFather Dan (after some priestly qualms) had concluded that I was thefirst man who ought to be told of it. 

Although this was exactly what I had expected, it fell on me like athunderbolt, and in spite of the warmth of my welcome home, I believe inmy soul I was the most downhearted man alive. 

Nevertheless I bundled Father Dan and the Sister and O'Sullivan into theautomobile, and jumping in after them, told the chauffeur to drive likethe deuce to the hotel. 

He could not do that, though, for the crowd in the station-yardsurrounded the car and shouted for a speech. I gave them one, sayingheaven knows what, except that their welcome made me ashamed of nothaving got down to the Pole, but please God I should get there next timeor leave my bones on the way. 

We got to the hotel at last (the same that my poor stricken darling hadstayed at after her honeymoon), and as soon as we reached my room Ilocked the door and said:

"Now out with it. And please tell me everything. "

Father Dan was the first to speak, but his pulpit style was too slow forme in my present stress of thoughts and feelings. He had hardly gotfurther than his difference with his Bishop, and the oath he had swornby him who died for us to come to London and never go back until he hadfound my darling, when I shook his old hand and looked towards theSister. 

She was quicker by a good deal, and in a few minutes I knew something ofmy dear one's story--how she had fled from home on my account, and formy sake had become poor; how she had lodged for a while in Bloomsbury;how hard she had been hit by the report of the loss of my ship; and how(Oh my poor, suffering, heroic, little woman!) she had disappeared onthe approach of another event of still more serious consequence. 

It was no time for modesty, not from me at all events, so while theFather's head was down, I asked plainly if there was a child, and wastold there was, and the fear of having it taken from her (I couldunderstand that) was perhaps the reason my poor darling had hiddenherself away. 

"And now, when, where, and by whom was she seen last?" I asked. 

"Last week, and again to-day, to-night, here in the West End--by afallen woman, " answered the Sister. 

"And what conclusion do you draw from that?"

The Sister hesitated for a moment and then said:

"That her child is dead; that she does not know you are alive; and thatshe is throwing herself away, thinking there is nothing left to livefor. "

"What?" I cried. "You believe that? Because she left that brute of ahusband . . . And because she came to me . . . You believe that shecould. . . . Never! Not Mary O'Neill! She would beg her bread, or die inthe streets first. "

I dare say my thickening voice was betraying me; but when I looked atMildred and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks and heard her excuses(it was "what hundreds of poor women were driven to every day"), I wasashamed and said so, and she put her kind hand in my hand in token ofher forgiveness. 

"But what's to be done now?" she asked. 

O'Sullivan was for sending for the police, but I would not hear of that. I was beginning to feel as I used to do when I lost a comrade in ablizzard down south, and (without a fact or a clue to guide me) sent ascore of men in a broad circle from the camp (like spokes in a wheel) tofind him or follow back on their tracks. 

There were only four of us, but I mapped out our courses, where we wereto go, when we were to return, and what we were to do if any of us foundmy lost one--take her to Sister's flat, which she gave the address of. 

It was half-past eleven when we started on our search, and I dare sayour good old Father Dan, after his fruitless journeys, thought it ahopeless quest. But I had found myself at last. My spirits which hadbeen down to zero had gone up with a bound. I had no ghost of an ideathat I had been called home from the 88th latitude for nothing. And Ihad no fear that I had come too late. 

Call it frenzy if you like--I don't much mind what people call it. But Iwas as sure as I have ever been of anything in this life, or ever expectto be, that the sufferings of my poor martyred darling were at an end, and that within an hour I should be holding her in my arms. 

 M. C. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH CHAPTER

There must be a physical power in fierce emotion to deprive us of theuse of our senses of hearing and even of sight, for my memory of whathappened after I left the Jew's has blank places in it. 

Trying to recall the incidents of that night is like travelling on amoorland road under a flying moon, with sometimes the whitest light inwhich everything is clearly seen, and then the blackest darkness. 

I remember taking the electric car going west, and seeing theWhitechapel Road shooting by me, with its surging crowds of pedestrians, its public-houses, its Cinema shows, and its Jewish theatres. 

I remember getting down at Aldgate Pump, and walking through that deadbelt of the City, which, lying between east and west, is alive like abeehive by day and silent and deserted by night. 

I remember seeing an old man, with a face like a rat's, picking upcigar-ends from the gutters before the dark Banks, and then a flock ofsheep bleating before a barking dog as they were driven through theechoing streets from the river-side towards the slaughter-houses nearSmithfield Market. 

I remember that when I came to St. Paul's the precincts of the cathedralwere very quiet and the big clock was striking nine. But on Ludgate Hillthe traffic was thick, and when I reached Fleet Street crowds of peoplewere standing in front of the newspaper offices, reading large placardsin written characters which were pasted on the windows. 

I remember that I did not look at these placards, thinking their newswas nothing to me, who had not seen a newspaper for months and for whomthe world was now eclipsed, but that as I stepped round one of thecrowds, which extended to the middle of the street, somebody said:

"He has landed at Southampton, it seems. "

I remember that when I reached Charing Cross I found myself on thefringe of another and much larger crowd, and that the people, who seemedto be waiting for somebody and were chatting with a noise like thecrackling of thorns under a pot, were saying:

"His train is fifty minutes late, so we've half an hour to wait yet. "

Then I remember that walking at random round St Martin's Church intoLeicester Square I came upon three "public women" who were swingingalong with a high step and laughing loudly, and that one of them wasAngela, and that she stopped on seeing me and cried:

"Hello! Here I am again, you see! _Giovanni's dead, and I don't care adamn!_"

I remember that she said something else--it was about Sister Mildred, but my mind did not take it in--and at the next moment she left me, andI heard her laughter once more as she swept round the corner. 

I hardly know what happened next, for here comes one of the blank placesin my memory, with nothing to light it except vague thoughts of Martin(and that soulless night in Bloomsbury when the newspapers announcedthat he was lost), until, wandering aimlessly through streets andstreets of people--such multitudes of people, no end of people--I foundmyself back at Charing Cross. 

The waiting crowd was now larger and more excited than before, and thetraffic at both sides of the station was stopped. 

"He's coming! He's coming! Here he is!" the people cried, and then therewere deafening shouts and cheers. 

I recall the sight of a line of policemen pushing people back (I wasmyself pushed back); I recall the sight of a big motor-car containingthree men and a woman, ploughing its way through; I recall the sight ofone of the men raising his cap; of the crowd rushing to shake hands withhim; then of the car swinging away, and of the people running after itwith a noise like that of the racing of a noisy river. 

It is the literal truth that never once did I ask myself what thistumult was about, and that for some time after it was over--a full hourat least--I had a sense of walking in my sleep, as if my body werepassing through the streets of the West End of London while my soul wassomewhere else altogether. 

Thus at one moment, as I was going by the National Gallery and thought Icaught the sound of Martin's name, I felt as if I were back in Glen Raa, and it was I myself who had been calling it. 

At another moment, when I was standing at the edge of the pavement inPiccadilly Circus, which was ablaze with electric light and throngedwith people (for the theatres and music-halls were emptying, men inuniform were running about with whistles, policemen were directing thetraffic, and streams of carriages were flowing by), I felt as if I wereback in my native island, where I was alone on the dark shore while thesea was smiting me. 

Again, after a brusque voice had said, "Move on, please, " I followed thecurrent of pedestrians down Piccadilly--it must have beenPiccadilly--and saw lines of "public women, " chiefly French and Belgian, sauntering along, and heard men throwing light words to them as theywent by, I was thinking of the bleating sheep and the barking dog. 

And again, when I was passing a men's club and the place where I had metAngela, my dazed mind was harking back to Ilford (with a frightenedsense of the length of time since I had been there--"Good heavens, itmust be five hours at least!"), and wondering if Mrs. Oliver was givingbaby her drops of brandy and her spoonfuls of diluted milk. 

But somewhere about midnight my soul seemed to take full possession ofmy body, and I saw things clearly and sharply as I turned out of OxfordStreet into Regent Street. 

The traffic was then rapidly dying down, the streets were darker, thecafés were closing, men and women were coming Pout of supper rooms, smoking cigarettes, getting into taxis and driving away; and anotherLondon day was passing into another night. 

People spoke to me. I made no answer. At one moment an elderly womansaid something to which I replied, "No, no, " and hurried on. At anothermoment, a foreign-looking man addressed me, and I pushed past withoutreplying. Then a string of noisy young fellows, stretching across thebroad pavement arm-in-arm, encircled me and cried:

"Here we are, my dear. Let's have a kissing-bee. "

But with angry words and gestures I compelled them to let me go, whereupon one of the foreign women who were sauntering by saidderisively:

"What does she think she's out for, I wonder?"

At length I found myself standing under a kind of loggia at the cornerof Piccadilly Circus, which was now half-dark, the theatres andmusic-halls being closed, and only one group of arc lamps burning on anisland about a statue. 

There were few people now where there had been so dense a crowd awhileago; policemen were tramping leisurely along; horse-cabs were going atwalking pace, and taxis were moving slowly; but a few gentlemen (walkinghome from their clubs apparently) were passing at intervals, oftenlooking at me, and sometimes speaking as they went by. 

Then plainly and pitilessly the taunt of the foreign woman came back tome--what was I there for?

I knew quite well, and yet I saw that not only was I not doing what Icame out to do, but every time an opportunity had offered I had resistedit. It was just as if an inherited instinct of repulsion had restrainedme, or some strong unseen arm had always snatched me away. 

This led me--was it some angel leading me?--to think again of Martin andto remember our beautiful and sacred parting at Castle Raa. 

"Whatever happens to either of us, we belong to each other for ever, " hehad said, and I had answered, "For ever and ever. "

It was a fearful shock to think of this now. I saw that if I did what Ihad come out to do, not only would Mary O'Neill be dead to me afterto-night, but Martin Conrad would be dead also. 

When I thought of that I realised that, although I had accepted, withoutquestion, the newspaper reports of Martin's death, he had never hithertobeen dead to me at all. He had lived with me every moment of my lifesince, supporting me, sustaining me and inspiring me, so that nothing Ihad ever done--not one single thing--would have been different if I hadbelieved him to be alive and been sure that he was coming back. 

But now I was about to kill Martin Conrad as well as Mary O'Neill, bybreaking the pledge (sacred as any sacrament) which they had made forlife and for eternity. 

Could I do that? In this hideous way too? Never! Never! Never! I shoulddie in the streets first. 

I remember that I was making a movement to go back to Ilford (God knowshow), when, on the top of all my brave thinking, came the pitifulthought of my child. My poor helpless little baby, who had made nopromise and was party to no pledge. She needed nourishment and fresh airand sunshine, and if she could not get them--if I went back to herpenniless--she would die!

My sweet darling! My Isabel, my only treasure! Martin's child and mine!

That put a quick end to all my qualms. Again I bit my lip until it bled, and told myself that I should speak to the Very next man who came along. 

"Yes, the very next man who comes along, " I thought. 

I was standing at that moment in the shadow of one of the pilasters ofthe loggia, almost leaning against it, and in the silence of the streetI heard distinctly the sharp firm step of somebody coming my way. 

It was a man. As he came near me he slowed down, and stopped. He wasthen immediately behind me. I heard his quick breathing. I felt that hiseyes were fixed on me. One sidelong glance told me that he was wearing along ulster and a cap, that he was young, tall, powerfully built, had astrong, firm, clean-shaven face, and an indescribable sense of the openair about him. 

"Now, now!" I thought, and (to prevent myself from running away) Iturned quickly round to him and tried to speak. 

But I said nothing. I did not know what women say to men under suchcircumstances. I found myself trembling violently, and before I wasaware of what was happening I had burst into tears. 

Then came another blinding moment and a tempest of conflicting feelings. 

I felt that the man had laid hold of me, that his strong hands weregrasping my arms, and that he was looking into my face. I heard hisvoice. It seemed to belong to no waking moment but to come out of thehours of sleep. 

"Mary! Mary!"

I looked up at him, but before my eyes could carry the news to my brainI knew who it was--I knew, I knew, I knew!

"Don't be afraid! It's I!"

Then something--God knows what--made me struggle to escape, and I cried:

"Let me go!"

But even while I was struggling--trying to fly away from my greatesthappiness--I was praying with all my might that the strong arms wouldhold me, conquer me, master me. 

They did. And then something seemed to give way within my head, andthrough a roaring that came into my brain I heard the voice again, andit was saying:

"Quick, Sister, call a cab. Open the door, O'Sullivan. No, leave her tome. I've got her, thank God!"

And then blinding darkness fell over me and everything was blotted out. 

But only a moment afterwards (or what seemed to be a moment) memory cameback in a great swelling wave of joy. Though I did not open my eyes Iknew that I was safe and baby was safe, and all was well. Somebody--itwas the same beloved voice again--was saying:

"Mally! My Mally! My poor, long-suffering darling! My own again, Godbless her!"

It was he, it was Martin, my Martin. And, oh Mother of my Lord, he wascarrying me upstairs in his arms. 

SEVENTH PART

I AM FOUND

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH CHAPTER

My return to consciousness was a painful, yet joyful experience. It wasalmost like being flung in a frail boat out of a tempestuous sea into aquiet harbour. 

I seemed to hear myself saying, "My child shall not die. Poverty shallnot kill her. I am going to take her into the country . . . She willrecover. . . . No, no, it is not Martin. Martin is dead. . . . But hiseyes . . . Don't you see his eyes. . . . Let me go. "

Then all the confused sense of nightmare seemed to be carried away as bysome mighty torrent, and there came a great calm, a kind of morningsweetness, with the sun shining through my closed eyelids, and not asound in my ears but the thin carolling of a bird. 

When I opened my eyes I was in bed in a room that was strange to me. Itwas a little like the Reverend Mother's room in Rome, having pictures ofthe Saints on the walls, and a large figure of the Sacred Heart over themantelpiece; but there was a small gas fire, and a canary singing in agilded cage that hung in front of the window. 

I was trying to collect my senses in order to realize where I was whenSister Mildred's kind face, in her white wimple and gorget, leaned overme, and she said, with a tender smile, "You are awake now, my child?"

Then memory came rushing back, and though the immediate past was stilllike a stormy dream I seemed to remember everything. 

"Is it true that I saw. . . . "

"Yes, " said Mildred. 

"Then he was not shipwrecked?"

"That was a false report. Within a month or two the newspapers hadcontradicted it. "

"Where is he?" I asked, rising from my pillow. 

"Hush! Lie quiet. You are not to excite yourself. I must call thedoctor. "

Mildred was about to leave the room, but I could not let her go. 

"Wait! I must ask you something more. "

"Not now, my child. Lie down. "

"But I must. Dear Sister, I must. There is somebody else. "

"You mean the baby, " said Mildred, in a low voice. 

"Yes. "

"She has been found, and taken to the country, and is getting betterrapidly. So lie down, and be quiet, " said Mildred, and with a longbreath of happiness I obeyed. 

A moment afterwards I heard her speaking to somebody over the telephone(saying I had recovered consciousness and was almost myself again), andthen some indistinct words came hack in the thick telephone voice likethat of a dumb man shouting down a tunnel, followed by sepulchral pealsof merry laughter. 

"The doctor will be here presently, " said Mildred, returning to me witha shining face. 

"And . . . He?"

"Yes, perhaps he will be permitted to come, too. "

She was telling me how baby had been discovered--by means of Mrs. Oliver's letter which had been found in my pocket--when there was thewhirr of an electric bell in the corridor outside, followed (as soon asMildred could reach the door) by the rich roll of an Irish voice. 

It was Dr. O'Sullivan, and in a moment he was standing by my bed, hisface ablaze with smiles. 

"By the Saints of heaven, this is good, though, " he said. "It's worth ahundred dozen she is already of the woman we brought here first. "

"That was last night, wasn't it?" I asked. 

"Well, not last night exactly, " he answered. And then I gathered that Ihad been ill, seriously ill, being two days unconscious, and that Martinhad been in a state of the greatest anxiety. 

"He's coming, isn't he?" I said. "Will he be here soon? How does helook? Is he well? Did he finish his work?"

"Now, now, now, " said the doctor, with uplifted hands. "If it's excitingyourself like this you're going to be, it isn't myself that will hetaking the risk of letting him come at all. "

But after I had pleaded and prayed and promised to be good he consentedto allow Martin to see me, and then it was as much as I could do not tothrow my arms about his neck and kiss him. 

I had not noticed what Mildred was doing during this time, and almostbefore I was aware of it somebody else had entered the room. 

It was dear old Father Dan. 

"Glory be to God!" he cried at sight of me, and then he said:

"Don't worry, my daughter, now don't worry, "--with that nervous emphasiswhich I knew by long experience to be the surest sign of my dearFather's own perturbation. 

I did not know then, or indeed until long afterwards, that for sixmonths past he had been tramping the streets of London in search of me(day after day, and in the dark of the night and the cold of themorning); but something in his tender old face, which was seamed andworn, so touched me with the memory of the last scene in my mother'sroom that my eyes began to overflow, and seeing this he began to laughand let loose his Irish tongue on us. 

"My blissing on you, doctor! It's the mighty proud man ye'll beentoirely to be saving the life of the swatest woman in the world. Andwhisha, Sister, if ye have a nip of something neat anywhere handy, faithit isn't my cloth will prevent me from drinking the health ofeverybody. "

If this was intended to cheer me up it failed completely, for the nextthing I knew was that the doctor was bustling the dear old Father out ofthe room, and that Mildred was going out after him. 

She left the door open, though, and as soon as I had calmed down alittle I listened intently for every sound outside. 

It was then that I heard the whirr of the electric bell again, but moresoftly this time, and followed by breathless whispered words in thecorridor (as of some one who had been running) and once more . . . Iknew, I knew, I knew!

After a moment Mildred came to ask me in a whisper if I was quite surethat I could control myself, and though my heart was thumping against mybreast, I answered Yes. 

Then I called for a hand-glass and made my hair a shade neater, andafter that I closed my eyes (God knows why) and waited. 

There was a moment of silence, dead silence, and then--then I opened myeyes and saw him standing in the open doorway. 

His big, strong, bronzed face--stronger than ever now, and marked with acertain change from the struggles he had gone through--was utterlybroken up. For some moments he did not speak, but I could see that hesaw the change that life had made in me also. Then in a low voice, solow that it was like the breath of his soul, he said:

"Forgive me! Forgive me!"

And stepping forward he dropped to his knees by the side of my bed, andkissed the arms and hands I was stretching out to him. 

That was more than I could bear, and the next thing I heard was mydarling's great voice crying:

"Sister! Sister! Some brandy! Quick! She has fainted. "

But my poor little fit of hysterics was soon at an end, and thoughMartin was not permitted to stay more than a moment longer, a mightywave of happiness flowed over me, such as I had never known before andmay never know again. 

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH CHAPTER

I had such a beautiful convalescence. For the major operations of theGreat Surgeon an anæsthetic has not yet been found, but within a week Iwas sitting up again, mutilated, perhaps, but gloriously alive andwithout the whisper of a cry. 

By this time Father Dan had gone back to Ellan (parting from me with asolemn face as he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart inpeace"), and Sister Mildred had obtained permission to give up one ofher rooms to me as long as I should need it. 

Martin came to see me every day, first for five minutes, then ten, andfinally for a quarter and even half an hour. He brought such anatmosphere of health with him, that merely to hold his hand seemed togive me new strength--being so pale and bloodless now that I thought thesun might have shone through me as through a sea-gull. 

I could scarcely believe it was not a dream that he was sitting by myside, and sometimes I felt as if I had to touch him to make sure he wasthere. 

How he talked to keep up my spirits! It was nearly always about hisexpedition (never about me or my experiences, for that seemed a darkscene from which he would not draw the curtain), and I was alla-tremble as I listened to the story of his hair-breadth escapes, thoughhe laughed and made so light of them. 

It nearly broke my heart that he had not got down to the Pole; and whenhe told me that it was the sense of my voice calling to him which hadbrought him back from the 88th latitude, I felt as if I had been acoward, unworthy of the man who loved me. 

Sometimes he talked about baby--he called her "Girlie"--telling a funnystory of how he had carried her off from Ilford, where the bricklayerhad suddenly conceived such a surprising affection for my child ("whathe might go so far as to call a fatherly feeling") that he had beenunwilling to part with her until soothed down by a few sovereigns--notto say frightened by a grasp of Martin's iron hand which had nearlybroken his wrist. 

"She's as right as a trivet now, though, " said Martin, "and I'll rundown to Chevening every other day to see how she's getting on. "

My darling was in great demand from the first, but when he could not bewith me in the flesh he was with me in the spirit, by means of thenewspapers which Mildred brought up in armfuls. 

I liked the illustrated ones best, with their pictures of scenes in theExpedition, particularly the portraits of Martin himself in hisAntarctic outfit, with his broad throat, determined lips, clear eyes, and that general resemblance to the people we all know which makes usfeel that the great men of every age are brothers of one family. 

But what literary tributes there were, too! What interviews, whatarticles! A member of the scientific staff had said that "down there, "with Nature in her wrath, where science was nothing and even physicalstrength was not all, only one thing really counted, and that was theheroic soul, and because Martin had it, he had always been the bornleader of them all. 

And then, summing up the tangible gains of the Expedition, the _Times_said its real value was moral and spiritual, because it showed that inan age when one half of the world seemed to be thinking of nothing butthe acquisition of wealth (that made me think of my father) and theother half of nothing but the pursuit of pleasure (that reminded me ofmy husband and Alma), there could be found men like Martin Conrad andhis dauntless comrades who had faced death for the sake of an ideal andwere ready to do so again. 

Oh dear! what showers of tears I shed over those newspapers! But thepersonal honours that were bestowed on Martin touched me most of all. 

First, the Royal Geographical Society held a meeting at the Albert Hall, where the Gold Medal was presented to him. I was in a fever of anxietyon the night of that function, I remember, until Dr. O'Sullivan (heavenbless, him!) came flying upstairs, to tell me that it had been a"splendid success, " and Martin's speech (he hadn't prepared a word ofit) "a perfect triumph. "

Then some of the Universities conferred degrees on my darling, which wasa source of inexpressible amusement to him, especially when (aftercoming back from Edinburgh) he marched up and down my room in hisDoctor's cap and gown, and I asked him to spell "promise" and hecouldn't. 

Oh, the joy of it all! It was so great a joy that at length it became apain. 

The climax came when the Home Secretary wrote to say that the King hadbeen graciously pleased to confer a Knighthood upon Martin, inrecognition of his splendid courage and the substantial contribution hehad already made to the material welfare of the world. 

That frightened me terribly, though only a woman would know why. It wasone thing to share the honours of the man I loved (however secretly andas it were by stealth), but quite another thing to feel that they werecarrying him away from me, drawing him off, lifting him up, and leavingme far below. 

When the sense of this became acute I used to sit at night, when Mildredwas out at her work, by the lofty window of her room, looking down onthe precincts of Piccadilly, and wondering how much my darling reallyknew about the impulse that took me there, and how nearly (but for thegrace of God) its awful vortex had swallowed me up. 

It was then that I began to write these notes (having persuaded Mildredto buy me this big book with its silver clasp and key), not intending atfirst to tell the whole story of my life, but only to explain to him forwhom everything has been written (what I could not bring myself to sayface to face), how it came to pass that I was tempted to that sin whichis the most awful crime against her sex that a woman can commit. 

Three months had gone by this time, the spring was coming and I wasbeginning to feel that Martin (who had not yet been home) was being keptin London on my account, when Dr. O'Sullivan announced that I was wellenough to be moved, and that a little of my native air would do me good. 

Oh, the thrill that came with that prospect! I suppose there is a sortof call to one's heart from the soil that gave one birth, but in my caseit was coupled with a chilling thought of the poor welcome I shouldreceive there, my father's house being closed to me and my husband'sabandoned for ever. 

The very next morning, however, there came a letter from Father Dan, giving me all the news of Ellan: some of it sad enough, God knows (aboutthe downfall of my father's financial schemes); some of it deliciouslywicked, such as it would have required an angel not to rejoice in (aboutthe bad odour in which Alma and my husband were now held, making thependulum of popular feeling swing back in my direction); and some of itutterly heart-breaking in its assurances of the love still felt for mein my native place. 

Of course the sweetest part of that came from Christian Ann, who, aftera stiff fight with her moral principles, had said that whatever I haddone I was as "pure as the mountain turf, " and, who then charged FatherDan with the message that "Mary O'Neill's little room" was waiting forher still. 

This settled everything--everything except one thing, and that was thegreatest thing of all. But when Martin came later the same day, havingreceived the same message, and declared his intention of taking me home, there seemed to be nothing left to wish for in earth or heaven. 

Nevertheless I shouldn't have been a woman If I had not coquetted withmy great happiness, so when Martin had finished I said:

"But dare you?"

"Dare I--what?" said Martin. 

"Dare you go home . . . With _me_?"

I knew what I wanted him to say, and he said it like a darling. 

"Look here, Mary, I'm just spoiling for a sight of the little island, and the old people are destroyed at not seeing me; but if I can't goback with you, by the Lord God! I'll never go back at all. "

I wanted to see baby before going away, but that was forbidden me. 

"Wait until you're well enough, and we'll send her after you, " said Dr. O'Sullivan. 

So the end of it all was that inside a week I was on my way to Ellan, not only with Martin, but also with Mildred, who, being a little out ofhealth herself, had been permitted to take me home. 

Shall I ever forget our arrival at Blackwater! The steamer we sailed inwas streaming with flags from stem to stern, and as she slid up theharbour the dense crowds that packed the pier from end to end seemedfrantic with excitement. Such shouting and cheering! Such waving of hatsand handkerchiefs!

There was a sensible pause, I thought, a sort of hush, when the gangwaybeing run down, Martin was seen to give his arm to me, and I wasrecognised as the lost and dishonoured one. 

But even that only lasted for a moment, it was almost as if the peoplefelt that this act of Martin's was of a piece with the sacred couragethat had carried him down near to the Pole, for hardly had he brought meashore, and put me into the automobile waiting to take us away, when thecheering broke out into almost delirious tumult. 

I knew it was all for Martin, but not even the humility of my position, and the sense of my being an added cause of my darling's glory, couldmake me otherwise than proud and happy. 

We drove home, with the sunset in our faces, over the mountain roadwhich I had crossed with my husband on the day of my marriage; and whenwe came to our own village I could not help seeing that a little--just alittle--of the welcome waiting for us was meant for me. 

Father Dan was there. He got into the car and sat by my side; and thensome of the village women, who had smartened themselves up in theirSunday clothes, reached over and shook hands with me, speaking aboutthings I had said and done as a child and had long forgotten. 

We had to go at a walking pace the rest of the way, and while Martinsaluted old friends (he remembered everybody by name) Father Dan talkedin my ear about the "domestic earthquake" that had been going on atSunny Lodge, everything topsy-turvy until to-day, the little room beingmade ready for me, and the best bedroom (the doctor's and ChristianAnn's) for Martin, and the "loft" over the dairy for the old peoplethemselves--as if their beloved son had been good in not forgettingthem, and had condescended in coming home. 

"Is it true?" they had asked each other. "Is he really, really coming?""What does he like to eat, mother?" "What does he drink?" "What does hesmoke?"

I had to close my eyes as I came near the gate of my father's house, and, except for the rumbling of the river under the bridge and thecawing of the rooks in the elms, I should not have known when we werethere. 

The old doctor (his face overflowing with happiness, and hisclose-cropped white head bare, as if he had torn out of the house at thetoot of our horn) met us as we turned into the lane, and for the littlethat was left of our journey he walked blithely as a boy by the car, atthe side on which Martin sat. 

I reached forward to catch the first sight of Sunny Lodge, and there itwas behind its fuchsia hedge, which was just breaking into bloom. 

There was Christian Ann, too, at the gate in her sunbonnet; and beforethe automobile had come to a stand Martin was out of it and had her inhis arms. 

I knew what that meant to the dear sweet woman, and for a moment myspirits failed me, because it flashed upon my mind that perhaps herheart had only warmed to me for the sake of her son. 

But just as I was stepping out of the car, feeling physically weak andslipping a little, though Father Dan and Sister Mildred were helping meto alight, my Martin's mother rushed at me and gathered me in her arms, crying:

"Goodness gracious me, doctor--if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, Godbless her!"--just as she did in the old, old days when I came as a child"singing carvals to her door. "

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH CHAPTER

When I awoke next morning in "Mary O'Neill's little room, " with itsodour of clean white linen and sweet-smelling scraas, the sun wasshining in at the half-open window, birds were singing, cattle werelowing, young lambs were bleating, a crow was cawing its way across thesky, and under the sounds of the land there was a far-off murmur of thesea. 

Through the floor (unceiled beneath) I could hear the Doctor andChristian Ann chortling away in low tones like two cheerful oldlove-birds; and when I got up and looked out I saw the pink and whiteblossom of the apple and plum trees, and smelt the smoke of burning peatfrom the chimney, as well as the salt of the sea-weed from the shore. 

Sister Mildred came to help me to dress, and when I went downstairs tothe sweet kitchen-parlour, feeling so strong and fresh, Christian Ann, who was tossing an oat-cake she was baking on the griddle, cried to me, as to a child:

"Come your ways, _villish_; you know the house. "

And when I stepped over the rag-work hearthrug and sat in the"elbow-chair" in the _chiollagh_, under the silver bowls that stood onthe high mantelpiece, she cried again, as if addressing the universe ingeneral, for there was nobody else in the room:

"Look at that now! She's been out in the big world, and seen greatwonders, and a power of people I'll go bail, but there she is, as niceand comfortable as if she had never been away!"

Sister Mildred came down next; and then the old doctor, who had beenwatching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old people'sbedroom after all and had put up at the "Plough"), came in, saying:

"The boy's late, mother--what's doing on him, I wonder?"

We waited awhile longer, and then sat down to breakfast. Oh, the homelybeauty of that morning meal, with its porridge, its milk, its honey andcakes, its butter like gold, and its eggs like cream!

In spite of Sister Mildred's protests Christian Ann stood and served, and I will not say that for me there was not a startling delight inbeing waited upon once more, being asked what I would like, and gettingit, giving orders and being obeyed--me, me, me!

At length in the exercise of my authority I insisted on Christian Annsitting down too, which she did, though she didn't eat, but went ontalking in her dear, simple, delicious way. 

It was always about Martin, and the best of it was about her beautifulfaith that he was still alive when the report came that he had been lostat sea. 

What? Her son dying like that, and she old and the sun going down onher? Never! Newspapers? Chut, who cared what people put in the papers?If Martin had really been lost, wouldn't _she_ have known it--havingborne him on her bosom ("a middling hard birth, too"), and being thefirst to hear his living voice in the world?

So while people thought she was growing "weak in her intellects, " shehad clung to the belief that her beloved son would come back to her. Andbehold! one dark night in winter, when she was sitting in the_chiollagh_ alone, and the wind was loud in the trees, and the doctorupstairs was calling on her to come to bed ("you're wearing yourselfaway, woman"), she heard a sneck of the garden gate and a step on thegravel path, and it was old Tommy the Mate, who without waiting for herto open the door let a great yell out of him through the window that a"talegraf" had come to say her boy was safe. 

Father Dan looked in after mass, in his biretta and faded cassock (thesame, I do declare, that he had worn when I was a child), and thenMartin himself came swinging up, with his big voice, like a shout fromthe quarter-deck. 

"Helloa! Stunning morning, isn't it?"

It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his mother, thoughthere was not too much reverence in his teasing, and hardly more lovethan license. 

When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house, andsaid she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was ready tosettle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have to go back toLondon presently, she cried:

"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been away, it'switched they are--longing and longing to go back again. What's there inLondon that's wanting him?"

Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud lift ofhis old head and a wink at Father Dan, said:

"Who knows? Perhaps it's the King that's wanting him, woman. "

"The King?" cried Christian Ann. "He's got a bonny son of his own, they're telling me, so what for should he be wanting mine?"

"Mary, " said. Martin, as soon as he could speak for laughing, "do youwant a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust but I mightgive her away. "

"Cuff him, Mrs. Conrad, " cried Father Dan. "Cuff him, the young rascal!He may be a big man in the great world over the water, but he mustn'tcome here expecting his mother and his old priest to worship him. "

How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was doingmost, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in all my lifebefore. 

Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke, and SisterMildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann took up herknitting, sat by my side, and told me the "newses" of home--sad news, most of it, about my father, God pity him, and how his great schemes for"galvanising the old island into life" had gone down to failure andfatuity, sending some to the asylum and some to the graveyard, andcertain of the managers of corporations and banks to gaol. 

My father himself had escaped prosecution; but he was supposed to be aruined man, dying of cancer, and had gone to live in his mother's oldcottage on the curragh, with only Nessy MacLeod to care for him--havingleft the Big House to Aunt Bridget and cousin Betsy, who declared (so Igathered or guessed) that I had disgraced their name and should neverlook on their faces again. 

"But dear heart alive, that won't cut much ice, will it?" said ChristianAnn, catching a word of Martin's. 

Later in the day, being alone with the old doctor. I heard something ofmy husband also--that he had applied (according to the laws of Ellan)for an Act of Divorce, and that our insular legislature was likely togrant it. 

Still later, having walked out into the garden, where the bluebells werein bloom, I, too, heard the sneck of the gate, and it was old Tommyagain, who (having been up to the "Plough" to "put a sight on himself")had come round to welcome me as well--a little older, a little feebler, "tacking a bit, " as he said, with "romps in his fetlock joints, " butfeeling "well tremenjus. "

He had brought the "full of his coat-pockets" of lobsters and crabs forme ("wonderful good for invalids, missie") and the "full of his mouth"of the doings at Castle Raa, which he had left immediately aftermyself--Price also, neither of them being willing to stay with a masterwho had "the rough word" for everybody, and a "misthress" who had "theblack curse on her" that would "carry her naked sowl to hell. "

"I wouldn't be gardener there, after the lil missie had gone . . . No, not for the Bank of Ellan and it full of goold. "

What a happy, happy day that was! There was many another day like it, too, during the sweet time following, when spring was smiling once moreupon earth and man, and body and soul in myself were undergoing aresurrection no less marvellous. 

After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able to takewalks with Martin--through the leafy lanes with the golden gorse on thehigh turf hedges and its nutty odour in the air, as far, sometimes, asto the shore, where we talked about "asploring" or perhaps (withoutspeaking at all) looked into each other's eyes and laughed. 

There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation from mychild, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in my ownposition which the presence of my baby would make acute (setting all theevil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I grew stronger, Iyearned for my little treasure. 

The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage andasked Martin if I might have my precious darling back. 

"Girlie?" he cried. "Certainly you may. You are well enough now, so whyshouldn't you? I'm going to London on Exploration business soon, andI'll bring her home with me. "

But when he was gone (Mildred went with him) I was still confronted byone cause of anxiety--Christian Ann. I could not even be sure she knewof the existence of my child, still less that Martin intended to fetchher. 

So once more I took my heart in both hands, and while we sat together inthe garden, with the sunlight pouring through the trees, Christian Annknitting and I pretending to read, I told her all. 

She knew everything already, the dear old thing, and had only beenwaiting for me to speak. After dropping a good many stitches she said:

"The world will talk, and dear heart knows what Father Dan himself willsay. But blood's thicker than water even if it's holy water, and she'smy own child's child, God bless her!"

After that we had such delicious times together, preparing for thelittle stranger who was to come--cutting up blankets and sheets, andsmuggling down from the "loft" to "Mary O'Neill's room" the woodencradle which had once been Martin's, and covering it with bows andribbons. 

We kept the old doctor in the dark (pretended we did) and when hewondered "what all the fuss was about, " and if "the island expected avisit from the Queen, " we told him (Christian Ann did) to "ask us noquestions and we'd tell no lies. "

What children we were, we two mothers, the old one and the young one! Iused to hint, with an air of great mystery, that my baby had "somebody'seyes, " and then the dear simple old thing would say:

"Somebody's eyes, has she? Well, well! Think of that, now!"

But Christian Ann, from the lofty eminence of the motherhood of onechild twenty-five years before, was my general guide and counsellor, answering all my foolish questions when I counted up baby's age (elevenmonths now) and wondered if she could walk and talk by this time, howmany of her little teeth should have come and whether she could rememberme. 

As the time approached for Martin's return our childishness increased, and on the last day of all we carried on such a game together as musthave made the very Saints themselves look down on us and laugh. 

Before I opened my eyes in the morning I was saying to myself, "Nowthey're on their way to Euston, " and every time I heard the clock strikeI was thinking, "Now they're in the train, " or "Now they're atLiverpool, " or "Now they're on the steamer"; but all the while I sang"Sally" and other nonsense, and pretended to be as happy as the day waslong. 

Christian Ann was even more excited than myself; and though she wasalways reproving me for my nervousness and telling me to be composed, Isaw her put the kettle instead of the tea-pot on to the tablecloth, andthe porridge-stick into the fire in place of the tongs. 

Towards evening, when Martin was due, I had reduced myself to such astate of weakness that Christian Ann wanted to put me to bed; butsitting down in the _chiollagh_, and watching the road from theimprisonment of the "elbow-chair, " I saw at last the two big white eyesof the automobile wheeling round in the dusk by the gate of my father'shouse. 

A few minutes afterwards Martin came sweeping into the kitchen with anice-looking nurse behind him, carrying my darling at her breast. 

She was asleep, but the light of the fire soon wakened her, and then astrange thing happened. 

I had risen from my seat, and Christian Ann had come hurrying up, and wetwo women were standing about baby, both ready to clutch at her, whenshe blinked her blue eyes and looked at us, and then held out her armsto her grandmother!

That nearly broke my heart for a moment (though now I thank the Lord forit), but it raised Christian Ann into the seventh heaven of rapture. 

"Did you see that now?" she cried, clasping my baby to her bosom--hereyes glistening as with sunshine, though her cheeks were slushed as withrain. 

I got my treasure to myself at last (Christian Ann having to show thenurse up to her bedroom), and then, being alone with Martin, I did notcare, in the intoxication of my happiness, how silly I was in my praiseof her. 

"Isn't she a little fairy, a little angel, a little cherub?" I cried. "And that nasty, nasty birthmark quite, quite gone. "

The ugly word had slipped out unawares, but Martin had caught it, andthough I tried to make light of it, he gave me no peace until I had toldhim what it meant--with all the humiliating story of my last night atCastle Raa and the blow my husband had struck me. 

"But that's all over now, " I said. 

"Is it? By the Lord God I swear it isn't, though!" said Martin, and hisface was so fierce that it made me afraid. 

But just at that moment Christian Ann came downstairs, and the olddoctor returned from his rounds, and then Tommy the Mate looked in onhis way to the "Plough, " and hinting at my going to church again someday, gave it as his opinion that if I put the "boght mulish" under my"perricut" (our old island custom for legitimising children) "the Bishophimself couldn't say nothin' against it"-at which Martin laughed so muchthat I thought he had forgotten his vow about my husband. 

MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD

I hadn't, though. 

The brute! The bully! When my darling told me that story (I had to dragit out of her) I felt that if I had been within a hundred miles at thetime, and had had to crawl home to the man on my hands and knees, therewouldn't have been enough of him left now to throw on the dust-heap. 

Nearly two years had passed since the debt was incurred, but I thought aChristian world could not go on a day longer until I had paid itback--with interest. 

So fearing that my tender-hearted little woman, if she got wind of mypurpose, might make me promise to put away my vow of vengeance, I got upearly next morning and ordered the motor-car to be made ready for avisit to Castle Raa. 

Old Tommy happened to be in the yard of the inn while I was speaking tothe chauffeur, and he asked if he might be allowed to go with me. Iagreed, and when I came out to start he was sitting in a corner of thecar, with his Glengarry pulled down over his shaggy eyebrows, and hisknotty hands leaning on a thick blackthorn that had a head as big as aturnip. 

We did not talk too much on the way--I had to save up my strength forbetter business--and it was a long spin, but we got to our journey's endtowards the middle of the morning. 

As we went up the drive (sacred to me by one poignant memory) an opencarriage was coming down. The only occupant was a rather vulgar-lookingelderly woman (in large feathers and flowing furbelows) whom I took tobe the mother of Alma. 

Three powdered footmen came to the door of the Castle as our car droveup. Their master was out riding. They did not know when he would beback. 

"I'll wait for him, " I said, and pushed into the hall, old Tommyfollowing me. 

I think the footmen had a mind to intercept us, but I suppose there wassomething in my face which told them it would be better not to try, so Iwalked into the first room with the door open. 

It turned out to be the dining-room, with portraits of the owner'sancestors all round the walls--a solid square of evil-looking rascals, every mother's son of them. 

Tommy, still resting his knotty hands on his big blackthorn, was sittingon the first chair by the door, and I on the end of the table, neithersaying a word to the other, when there came the sound of horses' hoofson the path outside. A little later there were voices in the hall, bothlow and loud ones--the footmen evidently announcing my arrival and theirmaster abusing them for letting me into the house. 

At the next moment the man came sweeping into the dining-room. He wascarrying a heavy hunting-crop and his flabby face was livid. Behind himcame Alma. She was in riding costume and was bending a lithe whip in hergloved hands. 

I saw that my noble lord was furious, but that mood suited me as well asanother, so I continued to sit on the end of the table. 

"So I hear, sir, " he said, striding up to me, "I hear that you havetaken possession of my place without so much as 'by your leave'?"

"That's so, " I answered. 

"Haven't you done enough mischief here, without coming to insult me byyour presence?"

"Not quite. I've a little more to do before I've finished. "

"Jim, " said the woman (in such a weary voice), "don't put yourself aboutover such a person. Better ring the bell for the servants and have himturned out of doors. "

I looked round at her. She tried an insolent smile, but it broke downbadly, and then his lordship strode up to me with quivering lips. 

"Look here, sir, " he said. "Aren't you ashamed to show your face in myhouse?"

"I'm not, " I replied. "But before I leave it, I believe _you'll_ beashamed to show your face anywhere. "

"Damn it, sir! Will you do me the honour to tell me why you are here?"said his lordship, with fury in his looks. 

"Certainly. That's exactly what I've come for, " I said, and then Istated my business without more ado. 

I told him what he had done to the woman who was ten thousand times toogood to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her withhis infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, andfinally striking her in the face like a coward and a cur. 

"Liar!" he cried, fairly gasping in his rage. "You're a liar and yourinformant is a liar, too. "

"Tommy, " I said, "will you step outside for a moment?"

Tommy went out of the room at once, and the woman, who was now lookingfrightened, tried to follow him. 

I stopped her. Rising from the table, I stepped over to the door andlocked it. 

"No, madam, " I said. "I want you to see what takes place between hislordship and me. "

The wretched woman fell back, but the man, grinding his teeth, camemarching up to me. 

"So you've come to fight me in my own house, have you?" he cried. 

"Not at all, " I answered. "A man fights his equal. I've come to _thrashyou_. "

That was enough for him, he lifted his hunting-crop to strike, but itdidn't take long to get that from his hand or to paralyse the arm withwhich he was lunging out at me. 

And then, seizing him by the white stock at his throat, I thrashed him. I thrashed him as I should have thrashed vicious ape. I thrashed himwhile he fumed and foamed, and cursed and swore. I thrashed him while hecried for help, and then yelled with pain and whined for mercy. Ithrashed him under the eyes of his ancestors, the mad, bad race he camefrom, and, him the biggest blackguard of them all. And then I flung himto the ground, bruised in every bone, and his hunting-crop after him. 

"I hear you're going to court for an Act of Divorce, " I said. "Pity youcan't take something to back you, so take that, and say I gave it you. "

I was turning towards the door when I heard a low, whining cry, likethat of a captured she-bear. It was from the woman. The wretchedcreature was on her knees at the farthest corner of the room, apparentlymumbling prayers, as if in terror that her own turn might be comingnext. 

In her sobbing fear I thought she looked more than ever like a poisonoussnake, and I will not say that the old impulse to put my foot on it didnot come back for a moment. But I only said as I passed, pointing to thewrithing worm on the floor:

"Look at him, madame. I wish you joy of your nobleman, and him of you. "

Then I opened the door, and notwithstanding the grim business I had beengoing through, I could have laughed at the scene outside. 

There was old Tommy with his back to the dining-room door, his Glengarryawry on his tousled head, and his bandy legs stretched firmly apart, flourishing his big-headed blackthorn before the faces of the threepowdered footmen, and inviting them to "come on. "

"Come on, now, you bleating ould billy-goats, come on, come on!"

I was in no hurry to get away, but lit a cigar in front of the housewhile the chauffeur was starting the motor and Tommy was wiping hissteaming forehead on the sleeve of his coat. 

All the way home the old man talked without ceasing, sometimes to me, and sometimes to the world in general. 

"You gave him a piece of your mind, didn't you?" he asked, with a winkof his "starboard eye. "

"I believe I did, " I answered. 

"I allus said you would. 'Wait till himself is after coming home, andit'll be the devil sit up for some of them, ' says I. "

There was only one limitation to Tommy's satisfaction over our day'sexpedition--that he had not cracked the powdered skulls of "some o' themriddiclus dunkeys. "

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

ONE HUNDRED AND NINTH CHAPTER

Another month passed, and then began the last and most important phaseof 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 (forwhich Parliament had voted a large sum), and when he was at home withreports, diaries, charts, maps, and photographs toward a book he waswriting 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 andtender nursing (God bless Christian Ann for all she did for me!), myhealth had improved every day--or perhaps, by that heavenly hopefulnesswhich goes with certain maladies, it had seemed to me to do so. 

Yet mine was a sort of twilight happiness, nevertheless. Though the sunwas always shining in my sky, it was frequently under eclipse. In spiteof the sheltered life I lived in that home of charity and love, I wasnever entirely free from a certain indefinable uneasiness about myposition. 

I was always conscious, too, that Martin's mother and father, not tospeak of Father Dan, were suffering from a similar feeling, forsometimes when we talked about the future their looks would answer to mythoughts, 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 herbutter in the dairy, I was playing with baby on the rag-work hearthrugwhen 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 casuallyglanced at it. 

But what a shock it gave me! The first heading that flew in my facewas--

 "INSULAR DIVORCE BILL PASSED. "

It was a report of the proceedings of the Supreme Court of our Ellanlegislature, which (notwithstanding the opposition of its ecclesiasticalmembers) had granted my husband's petition. 

Perhaps I ought to have had a sense of immense relief. Or perhaps Ishould have gone down on my knees there and then, and thanked God thatthe miserable entanglement of the horrible marriage that had been forcedupon me was at last at an end. 

But no, I had only one feeling as the newspaper fell from myfingers--shame and humiliation, not for myself (for what did it matterabout me, anyway?), but for Martin, whose name, now so famous, I had, through my husband's malice, been the means of dragging through thedust. 

I remember that I thought I should never be able to look into mydarling's face again, that when he came in the afternoon (as he alwaysdid) I should have to run away from him, and that all that was left tome was to hide myself and die. 

But just as these wild thoughts were galloping through my brain I heardthe sneck of the garden gate, and almost before I was aware of what elsewas happening Martin had come sweeping into the house like a rush ofwind, thrown his arms around me, and covered my face, my neck, and myhands with kisses--never having done so before since I came to live athis 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 fromyou--all the miserable legal business. But no matter! It's over now. Ofcourse it's shocking--perfectly shocking--that that squirming worm, after his gross infidelities, should have been able to do what he hasdone. But what matter about that either? He has done just what wewanted--what you couldn't do for yourself before I went away, yourconscience 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 believefully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long had come to meat 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 andwife?"

"Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I dothink it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough, my poorgirl. But all that you have gone through has to be forgotten, and youare never to look back again. "

"Yes, yes, I know I should be happy, very happy, " I said, "but whatabout 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 doingit), "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 thensnatched me still closer to his breast. 

"Mary, " he cried, "don't ask me to consider what the damnableinsincerities of society may say to a case like ours. If _you_ don'tcare, then neither do I. And as for the world, by the Lord God I swearthat all I ask of it I am now holding in my arms. "

That conquered me--poor trembling hypocrite that I was, praying withall my soul that my objections would be overcome. 

In another moment I had thrown my arms about my Martin's neck and kissedand kissed him, feeling for the first time after my months and years offiery 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, whatfoolish rein I gave to my new-born rapture!

I picked baby up from the hearthrug and kissed her also, and then tookher into the dairy to be kissed by her grandmother, who must haveoverheard what had passed between Martin and me, for I noticed that hervoice had suddenly become livelier and at least an octave higher. 

Then, baby being sleepy, I took her upstairs for her morning nap, andafter leaning over her cradle, in the soft, damp, milk-like odour of hersweet body and breath, I stood up before the glass and looked at my ownhot, tingling, blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes. 

Oh, what gorgeous dreams of happiness came to me! I may have been theunmarried mother of a child, but my girlhood--my lost girlhood--wasflowing back upon me. A vision of my marriage-day rose up before me andI 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 hadalways been happy. It was almost as though some blessed stream of holywater had washed my memory clean of all the soilure of my recent days inLondon, for sure I am that if anybody had at that moment mentionedIlford and the East End, the bricklayer and the Jew, or spoken of thematernity homes and the orphanages, I should have screamed. 

Towards noon the old doctor came back from his morning rounds, and Inoticed that _his_ voice was pitched higher too. We never once spokeabout the great news, the great event, while we sat at table; but Icould not help noticing that we were all talking loud and fast and onthe top of each other, as if some dark cloud which had hovered over ourhousehold 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 forMartin, who must be still pondering over his papers at the "Plough. "

How beautiful was the day! How blue the sky! How bright the earth! Howjoyous 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 begood to everybody else--especially to my father, from whom it seemedwrong for a daughter to be estranged, whatever he was and whatever hehad done to her. 

So I turned my face towards my poor grandmother's restored cottage onthe curragh, fully determined to be reconciled to my father; and I onlyslackened my steps and gave up my purpose when I began to think of NessyMacLeod 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 vainidea of making peace with Aunt Bridget and then slipping upstairs to mymother's room--having such a sense of joyous purity that I wished tobreathe the sacred air my blessed saint had lived in. 

But the end of it all was that I found myself on the steps of thePresbytery, feeling breathlessly happy, and telling myself, with alittle access of pride in my own gratitude, that it was only right andproper that I should bring my happiness where I had so often brought mysorrow--to the dear priest who had been my friend since the day of mybirth and my darling mother's friend before. 

Poor old Father Dan! How good I was going to be to him!

ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH CHAPTER

A few minutes afterwards I was tripping upstairs (love and hope workwonderful miracles!) behind the Father's Irish housekeeper, Mrs. Cassidy, who was telling me how well I was looking ("smart and wellextraordinary"), asking if it "was on my two feet I had walked all theway, " and denouncing the "omathauns" who had been "after telling herthere wasn't the width of a wall itself betune me and the churchyard. "

I found Father Dan in his cosy study lined with books; and being so muchwrapped up in my own impetuous happiness I did not see at first that hewas confused and nervous, or remember until next day that, though (atthe sound of my voice from the landing) he cried "Come in, my child, come in, " he was standing with his back to the door as Ientered--hiding something (it must have been a newspaper) under theloose seat of his easy-chair. 

"Father, " I said, "have you heard the news?"

"The news. . . . "

"I mean the news in the newspaper. "

"Ah, the news in the newspaper. "

"Isn't it glorious? That terrible marriage is over at last! Without mydoing anything, either! Do you remember what you said the last time Icame here?"

"The last time. . . . "

"You said that I, being a Catholic, could not break my marriage withoutbreaking my faith. But my husband, being a Protestant, had nocompunction. So it has come to the same thing in the end, you see. Andnow I'm free. "

"You're free . . . Free, are you?"

"It seems they have been keeping it all away from me--making no defence, I suppose--and it was only this morning I heard the news. "

"Only this morning, was it?"

"I first saw it in a newspaper, but afterwards Martin himself came totell me. "

"Martin came, did he?"

"He doesn't care in the least; in fact, he is glad, and says we can bemarried at any time. "

"Married at any time--he says that, does he?"

"Of course nothing is arranged yet, dear Father, but I couldn't helpcoming to see you about it. I want everything to be simple and quiet--nodisplay of any kind. "

"Simple and quiet, do you?"

"Early in the morning--immediately after mass, perhaps. "

"Immediately after mass. . . . "

"Only a few wild flowers on the altar, and the dear homely souls wholove me gathered around. "

"The dear, homely souls. . . . "

"It will be a great, great thing for me, but I don't want to forcemyself upon anybody, or to triumph over any one--least of all over mypoor father, now that he is so sick and down. "

"No, no . . . Now that he is so sick and down. "

"I shall want you to marry us, Daddy Dan--not the Bishop or anybody elseof that kind, you know. "

"You'll want me to marry you--not the Bishop or anybody else of thatkind. "

"But Father Dan, " I cried, laughing a little uneasily (for I had begunto realise that he was only repeating my own words), "why don't you saysomething for yourself?"

And then the cheery sunshine of the cosy room began to fade away. 

Father Dan fumbled the silver cross which hung over his cassock (a suresign of his nervousness), and said with a grave face and in a voice alla-tremble with emotion:

"My child. . . . "

"Yes?"

"You believe that I wouldn't pain or distress or shock you if I couldavoid it?"

"Indeed I do. "

"Yet I am going to pain and distress and shock you now. I . . . I cannotmarry you to Martin Conrad. I daren't. The Church thinks that you aremarried already--that you are still the wife of your husband. "

Though my dear priest had dealt me my death-blow, I had not yet begun tofeel it, so I smiled up into his troubled old face and said:

"But how can the Church think that, dear Father? My husband has norights over me now, and no duties or responsibilities with respect tome. He can marry again if he likes. And he will, I am sure he will, andnobody can prevent him. How, then, can the Church say that I am stillhis wife?"

"Because marriage, according to the law of the Church, can only bedissolved by death, " said Father Dan. "Haven't I told you that before, my daughter? Didn't we go over it again and again when you were here thelast time?"

"Yes, yes, but I thought if somebody else sought the divorce--somebodywho had never believed in the indissolubility of marriage and wasn'tbound by the law of the Church . . . We've heard of cases of that kind, haven't we?"

Father Dan shook his head. 

"My poor child, no. The Church thinks marriage is a sacred covenantwhich no difference of belief, no sin on either side, can ever break. "

"But, Father, " I cried, "don't you see that the law has already brokenit?"

"Only the civil law, my daughter. Remember the words of our blessed andholy Redeemer: '_Every one that putteth away his wife and marriethanother committeth adultery; and he that marrieth one that is put awaycommitteth adultery. '_ . . . My poor child, my heart bleeds for you, butisn't that the Divine Commandment?"

"Then you think, " I said (the room was becoming dark and I could feel mylip trembling), "you think that because I went through that marriageceremony two years ago . . . And though the civil law has dissolved it. . . You think I am still bound by it, and will continue to be so . . . To the end of my life?"

Father Dan plucked at his cassock, fumbled his print handkerchief, andreplied:

"I am sorry, my child, very, very sorry. "

"Father Dan, " I said sharply, for by this time my heart was beginning toblaze, "have you thought about Martin? Aren't you afraid that if ourChurch refuses to marry us he may ask some other church to do so?"

"Christ's words must be the final law for all true Christians, mydaughter. And besides. . . . "

"Well?"

"Besides that. . . . "

"Yes?"

"It blisters my tongue to say it, my child, knowing your sufferings andgreat temptations, but. . . . "

"But what, dear Father?"

"You are in the position of the guilty party, and therefore no goodclergyman of any Christian Church in the world, following theCommandment of his Master, would dare to marry you. "

What happened after that I cannot exactly say. I remember that, feelingthe colour flying to my face, I flung up my hands to cover it, and thatwhen I came to full possession of my senses again Father Dan (himself ina state of great agitation) was smoothing my arms and comforting me. 

"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth--thebitter truth, my daughter. "

He had always seen this dark hour coming to him, and again and again hehad prayed to be delivered from it--in the long nights of his fruitlesswanderings when I was lost in London, and again since I had been foundand had come home and he had looked on, with many a pang, at our silenthopes and expectations--Martin's and mine, we two children. 

"And when you came into my little den to-day, my daughter, with a faceas bright as stars and diamonds, God knows I would have given half ofwhat is left of my life that mine should not be the hand to dash the cupof your happiness away. "

As soon as I was sufficiently composed, within and without, Father Danled me downstairs (praying God and His Holy Mother to strengthen me onmy solitary way), and then stood at the door in his cassock to watch mewhile I walked up the road. 

It was hardly more than half an hour since I had passed over the groundbefore, yet in that short time the world seemed to have become pale andgrey--the sun gone out, the earth grown dark, the still air joyless, nothing left but the everlasting heavens and the heavy song of the sea. 

As I approached the doctor's house Martin came swinging down the road tomeet me, with his strong free step and that suggestion of the wind fromthe mountain-tops which seemed to be always about him. 

"Hello!" he cried. "Thought you were lost and been hunting all over theplace for you. "

But as he came nearer and saw how white and wan my face was, though Iwas doing my best to smile, he stopped and said:

"My poor little woman, where have you been, and what have they beendoing to you?"

And then, as well as I could, I told him. 

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH CHAPTER

"It's all my fault, " he said. 

He had led me to the garden-house, which stood among the bluebells atthe end of the orchard, and was striding to and fro in front of it. 

"I knew perfectly what the attitude of the Church would be, and I oughtto have warned you. "

I had never before seen him so excited. There was a wild look in hiseyes and his voice was quivering like the string of a bow. 

"Poor old Father Dan! He's an old angel, with as good a heart as everbeat under a cassock. But what a slave a man may be to the fetish of hisfaith! Only think what he says, my darling! The guilty party! I'll neverbelieve you are the guilty party, but consider! The guilty party maynever marry! No good clergyman of any Christian Church in the world daremarry her! What an infamy! Ask yourself what the churches are here for. Aren't they here to bring salvation to the worst of sinners? Yet theycast out the woman who has sinned against her marriage vow--denying heraccess to the altar and turning her out of doors--though she may haverepented a thousand times, with bitter, bitter tears!"

He walked two or three paces in front of the garden-house and then cameback to me with flaming eyes. 

"But that's not your case, anyway, " he said. "Father Dan knows perfectlythat your marriage was no marriage at all--only a sordid bit ofcommercial bargaining, in which your husband gave you his bad name foryour father's unclean money. It was no marriage in any other senseeither, and might have been annulled if there had been any commonhonesty in annulment. And now that it has tumbled to wreck and ruin, asanybody might have seen it would do, you are told that you are bound toit to the last day and hour of your life! After all you have gonethrough--all you have suffered--never to know another hour of happinessas long as you live! While your husband, notwithstanding his brutalitiesand infidelities, is free to do what he likes, to marry whom he pleases!How stupid! How disgusting! how damnable!"

His passionate voice was breaking, he could scarcely control it. 

"Oh, I know what they'll say. It will be the old, old song, 'Whom Godhath joined together. ' That's what this old Church of ours has beensaying for centuries to poor women with broken hearts. Has the Churchitself got a heart to break? No--nothing but its cast-iron laws whichhave been broken a thousand times and nobody a penny the worse. "

"But I wonder, " he continued, "I wonder why these churchmen, who wouldtalk about the impossibility of putting asunder those whom God hasjoined together, don't begin by asking themselves how and when and whereGod joins them. Is it in church, when they stand before the altar andare asked a few questions, and give a few answers? If so, then God isresponsible for some of the most shocking transactions that everdisgraced humanity--all the pride and vanity and deliberate concubinagethat have covered themselves in every age, and are covering themselvesstill, with the cloak of marriage. "

"But no, " said Martin, "it's not in churches that God marries people. They've got to be married before they go there, or they are nevermarried at all--never! They've got to be married in their _hearts_, forthat's where God joins people together, not in churches and beforepriests and altars. "

I sat listening to him with a rising and throbbing heart, and afteranother moment he stepped into the garden-house, and sat beside me. 

"Mary, " he said, in his passionate voice, "that's our case, isn't it?God married us from the very first. There has never been any other womanfor me, and there never has been any other man for you--isn't that so, my darling? . . . Then what are they talking about--these churches andchurchmen? It's _they_ who are the real divorcers--trying to put thoseasunder whom God Himself has joined together. That's the plain sense ofthe matter, isn't it?"

I was trembling with fear and expectation. Perhaps it was the same withme as it had been before; perhaps I wanted (now more than ever) tobelieve what Martin was saying; perhaps I did not know enough to be ableto answer him; perhaps my overpowering love and the position I stood incompelled me to agree. But I could not help it if it seemed to me thathis clear mind--clear as a mountain river and as swift and strong--wassweeping away all the worn-out sophistries. 

"Then what . . . What are we to do?" I asked him. 

"Do? Our duty to ourselves, my darling, that's what we have to do. If wecannot be married according to the law of the Church, we must be marriedaccording to the law of the land. Isn't that enough? This is our ownaffair, dearest, ours and nobody else's. It's only a witness we wantanyway--a witness before God and man that we intend to be man and wifein future. "

"But Father Dan?"

"Leave him to me, " said Martin. "I'll tell him everything. But come intothe house now. You are catching a cold. Unless we take care they'll killyou before they've done. "

Next day he leaned over the back of my chair as I sat in the _chiollagh_with baby in my lap, and said, in a low tone:

"I've seen Father Dan. "

"Well?"

"The old angel took it badly. 'God forbid that you should do that same, my boy, ' he said, 'putting both yourself and that sweet child of mineout of the Church for ever. ' 'It's the Church that's putting us out, ' Itold him. 'But God's holy law condemns it, my son, ' he said. 'God's lawis love; and He has no other law, ' I answered. "

I was relieved and yet nervous, glad and yet afraid. 

A week passed, and then the time came for Martin to go to Windsor forhis investiture. There had been great excitement in Sunny Lodge inpreparation for this event, but being a little unwell I had been out ofthe range of it. 

At the moment of Martin's departure I was in bed, and he had comeupstairs to say good-bye to me. 

What had been happening in the meantime I hardly knew, but I hadgathered that he thought pressure would be brought to bear on me. 

"Our good old Church is like a limpet on the shore, " he said. "Once itgets its suckers down it doesn't let go in a hurry. But sit tight, little woman. Don't yield an inch while I'm away, " he whispered. 

When he left me I reached up to see him going down the road to therailway station. His old father was walking proudly by his side, bare-headed as usual and still as blithe as a boy. 

Next day I was startled by an unexpected telegram. It came from aconvent in Lancashire and was addressed to "Mary O'Neill, care of DoctorConrad. " It ran:

"_Am making a round of visits to the houses of our Society and wouldlike to see you on my way to Ireland. May I cross to-morrow? MotherMagdalene_. "

ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH CHAPTER

She arrived the following afternoon--my dear Reverend Mother with thepale spiritual face and saint-like eyes. 

Except that her habit was now blue and white instead of black, sheseemed hardly changed in any respect since our days at the Sacred Heart. 

Finding that I was in bed, she put up at the "Plough" and came every dayto nurse me. 

I was naturally agitated at seeing her again after so many years andsuch various experiences, being uncertain how much she knew of them. 

Remembering Martin's warning, I was also fairly certain that she hadbeen sent for, but my uneasiness on both heads soon wore off. 

Her noiseless step, her soft voice, and her sweet smile soothed andcomforted me. I began to feel afresh the influence she had exercisedover me when I was a child, and to wonder why, during my dark time inLondon, I had never thought of writing to her. 

During the first days of her visit she said nothing about painfulthings--never mentioning my marriage, or what had happened since she sawme last. 

Her talk was generally about our old school and my old schoolfellows, many of whom came to the convent for her "retreats, " which were underthe spiritual direction of one of the Pope's domestic prelates. 

Sometimes she would laugh about our Mother of the Novices who had"become old and naggledy"; sometimes about the little fat Maestro of thePope's choir who had cried when I first sang the hymn to the Virgin, ("Go on, little angel, "); and sometimes about the two old lay sisters(now quite toothless) who still said I might have been a "wonderfulwasherwoman" if I had "put my mind to it. "

I hate to think that my dear Reverend Mother was doing this consciouslyin order to break down my defences, but the effect was the same. Littleby little, during the few days she was with me, she bridged the spaceback to my happy girlhood, for insensibly I found myself stirred by theemotions of the convent, and breathing again the air of my beloved Rome. 

On the afternoon of the fourth day of her visit I was sitting up by herside in front of my window, which was wide open. It was just such apeaceful evening as our last one at Nemi. Not a leaf was stirring; not abreath of wind in the air; the only sounds we heard were the lowing ofthe cattle waiting to be milked, the soft murmur of the sea, and thejolting of a springless cart that was coming up from the shore, ladenwith sea wrack. 

As the sun began to sink it lit blazing fires in the windows of thevillage in front--especially in the window of my mother's room, whichwas just visible over the tops of the apple trees in the orchard. 

The Reverend Mother talked of Benediction. If she were in Rome she wouldbe in church singing the _Ora pro nobis_. 

"Let us sing it now. Shall we?" she said. 

At the next moment her deep majestic contralto, accompanied by my ownthin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent air theholy notes which to me are like the reverberations of eternity:

 "Mater purissima Ora pro nobis. Mater castissima Ora pro nobis. "

When we had finished I found my hand lying in her lap. Patting it gentlyshe said:

"Mary, I am leaving you to-morrow. "

"So soon?"

"Yes, but I can't go without telling you why I came"--and then hermission was revealed to me. 

She had heard about my marriage and the ruin it had fallen to; mydisappearance from home and the circumstances of my recovery; myhusband's petition for divorce and the disclosures that had followed it. 

But sad and serious and even tragic as all this might be, it was asnothing (in the eyes of the Church and of God) compared with the awfulgravity of the step I now contemplated--a second marriage while myhusband was still alive. 

She had nothing to say against Martin. Except the facts that concernedmyself she had never heard a word to his discredit. She could evenunderstand those facts, though she could not condone them. Perhaps hehad seen my position (married to a cruel and unfaithful husband) and hispity had developed into love--she had heard of such happenings. 

"But only think, my child, what an abyss he is driving you to! He asksyou to break your marriage vows! . . . Oh, yes, yes, I can see what hewill say--that pressure was put upon you and you were too young to knowwhat you were doing. That may be true, but it isn't everything. Ithought it wrong, cruelly wrong, that your father should choose ahusband for you without regard to your wish and will. But it was you, not your father, who made your marriage vows, and you can never get awayfrom that--never!"

Those marriage vows were sacred; our blessed Saviour had said theycould never be broken, and our holy Church had taken His Commandment forlaw. 

"Think, my child, only think what would happen to the world if everywoman who has made an unhappy marriage were to do as you think of doing. What a chaos! What an uprooting of all the sacred ties of home andfamily! And how women would suffer--women and children above all. Don'tyou see that, my daughter?"

The security of society lay in the sanctity of marriage; the sanctity ofmarriage lay in its indissolubility; and its indissolubility centred inthe fact that God was a party to it. 

"Perhaps you are told that your marriage will be your own concern onlyand that God and the Church have nothing to do with it. But if women hadbelieved that in all ages, how different the world would be to-day! Oh, believe me, your marriage vow is sacred, and you cannot break it withoutsin--mortal sin, my daughter. "

The moral of all this was that I must renounce Martin Conrad, wash myheart clean of my love of him, shun the temptation of seeing him again, and if possible forget him altogether. 

"It will be hard. I know it will he hard, but. . . . "

"It will be quite impossible, " I said as well as I could, for my verylips were trembling. 

I had been shaken to the depths of my soul by what the Reverend Mothersaid, but remembering Martin's warning I now struggled to resist her. 

"Two years ago, while I was living with my husband I tried to do thatand I couldn't, " I said. "And if I couldn't do it then, when the legalbarrier stood between us, how can I do it now when the barrier is gone?"

After that I told her of all I had passed through since as a result ofmy love for Martin--how I had parted from him when he went down to theAntarctic; how I had waited for him in London; how I had sacrificedfamily and friends and home, and taken up poverty and loneliness andhard work for him; how I had fallen into fathomless depths of despairwhen I thought I had lost him; and how joy and happiness had returnedonly when God, in His gracious goodness, had given him back. 

"No, no, no", I cried. "My love for Martin can never be overcome orforgotten--never as long as I live in the world!"

"Then, " said the Reverend Mother (she had been listening intently withher great eyes fixed on my hot and tingling face), "then, " she said, inher grave and solemn voice, "If that is the case, my child, there isonly one thing for you to do--to leave it. "

"Leave it?"

"Leave the world, I mean. Return with me to Rome and enter the convent. "

It would be impossible to say how this affected me--how it shook me tothe heart's core--how, in spite of my efforts to act on my darling'swarning, it seemed to penetrate to the inmost part of my being and towaken some slumbering instinct in my soul. 

For a long time I sat without speaking again, only listening with afluttering heart to what the Reverend Mother was saying--that it was oneof the objects of the religious life to offer refuge to the torturedsoul that could not trust itself to resist temptation; and that takingmy vows as a nun to God would be the only way (known to and acknowledgedby the Church) of cancelling my vows as a wife to my husband. 

"You will be a bride still, my child, but a bride of Christ. And isn'tthat better--far better? You used to wish to be a nun, you know, and ifyour father had not come for you on that most unhappy errand you mighthave been one of ourselves already. Think of it, my child. The Mothersof our convent will be glad to welcome you, if you can come as a willingand contented Sister. And how can I leave you here, at the peril of yoursoul, my daughter?"

I was deeply moved, but I made one more effort. 

I told the Reverend Mother that, since the days when I had wished to bea nun, a great change had come over me. I had become a woman, with all awoman's passions--the hunger and thirst for love, human love, the loveof the good man who loved me with all his soul and strength. Therefore Icould never be a willing and contented Sister. I should only break thepeace and harmony of their house. And though she were to put me down inthe lowest cell of her convent, my love would follow me there; it wouldinterrupt my offices, it would clamour through my prayers, and I shouldalways be unhappy--miserably unhappy. 

"Not so unhappy there as you will be if you remain in the world andcarry out your intention, " said the Reverend Mother. "Oh believe me, mychild, I know you better than you know yourself. If you marry again, youwill never be able to forget that you have broken your vow. Other womenmay forget it--frivolous women--women living in society and devotingtheir lives to selfish pleasures. Such women may divorce their husbands, or be divorced by them, and then marry again, without remembering thatthey are living in a state of sin, whatever the civil law may say--openand wicked and shameless sin. But you will remember it, and it will makeyou more unhappy than you have ever been in your life before. "

"Worse than that, " she continued, after a moment, "it will make yourhusband unhappy also. He will see your remorse, and share it, because hewill know he has been the cause. If he is a good man the mere sight ofyour grief will torture him. The better man he is the more will hesuffer. If you were a runaway nun he would wish to take you back to yourconvent, for though it might tear his heart out to part with you, hewould want to restore your soul. But being a wife who has broken hermarriage vows he will never be able to do anything. An immense and awfulshadow will stand between you and darken every hour of your lives thatis left. "

When the Reverend Mother had done I sat motionless and speechless, withan aching and suffocating heart, staring down on the garden over whichthe night was falling. 

After a while she patted my cold hand and got up to go, saying she wouldcall early in the morning to bid me good-bye. Her visit to Ireland wouldnot last longer than three weeks, and after that she might come back forme, if I felt on reflection (she was sure I should) that I ought toreturn with her to Rome. 

I did not reply. Perhaps it was partly because I was physically weakthat my darling's warning was so nearly overcome. But the moment thedoor closed on the Reverend Mother a conviction of the truth of what shehad said rushed upon me like the waves of an overflowing sea. 

Yet how cruel! After all our waiting, all our longing, all our gorgeousday-dreams of future happiness! When I was going to be a bride, a happybride, with my lost and stolen girlhood coming back to me!

For the second time a dark and frowning mountain had risen betweenMartin and me. Formerly it had been my marriage--now it was my God. 

But if God forbade my marriage with Martin what was I to do? What wasleft in life for me? Was there anything left?

I was sitting with both hands over my face, asking myself thesequestions and struggling with a rising tempest of tears, when I heardbaby crying in the room below, and Christian Ann hushing and comfortingher. 

"What's doing on the _boght_, I wonder?"

A few minutes later they came upstairs, Isabel on her grandmother's arm, in her nightdress, ready for bed. 

"If it isn't the wind I don't know in the world what's doing on the_millish_, " said the old lady. 

And then baby smiled through the big round beads that stood in hersea-blue eyes and held out her arms to me. 

Oh God! Oh God! Was not _this_ my answer?

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

In her different way Christian Ann had arrived at the same conclusion. Long before the thought came to me she had conceived the idea thatFather Dan and the Reverend Mother were conspiring to carry me off, andin her dear sweet womanly jealousy (not to speak of higher and noblerinstincts) she had resented this intensely. 

For four days she had smothered her wrath, only revealing it to baby inhalf-articulate interviews over the cradle ("We're no women for thesenun bodies, going about the house like ghosts, are we, _villish_?"), buton the fifth day it burst into the fiercest flame and the gentle oldthing flung out at everybody. 

That was the morning of the departure of the Reverend Mother, who, aftersaying good-bye to me in my bedroom, had just returned to theparlour-kitchen, where Father Dan was waiting to take her to the railwaystation. 

What provoked Christian Ann's outburst I never rightly knew, for thoughthe door to the staircase was open, and I could generally catch anythingthat was said in the room below (through the open timbers of theunceiled floor), the soft voice of the Reverend Mother never reached me, and the Irish roll of Father Dan's vowels only rumbled up like the soundof a drum. 

But Christian Ann's words came sharp and clear as the crack of abreaker, sometimes trembling with indignation, sometimes quivering withemotion, and at last thickening into sobs. 

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, may I ask what is that you're saying to theFather about Mary O'Neill? . . . Going back to Rome is she? To theconvent, eh? . . . No, ma'am, that she never will! Not if I know her, ma'am. Not for any purpose in the world, ma'am. . . . Temptation, yousay? You know best, ma'am, but I don't call it overcomingtemptation--going into hidlands to get out of the way of it. . . . Yes, I'm a Christian woman and a good Catholic too, please the Saints, butasking your pardon, ma'am, I'm not thinking too much of your convents, or believing the women inside of them are living such very unselfishlives either, ma'am. "

Another soft rumble as of a drum, and then--

"No, ma'am, no, that's truth enough, ma'am. I've never been a nunmyself, having had better work to do in the world, ma'am. But it's allas one--I know what's going on in the convents, I'm thinking. . . . Harmony and peace, you say? Yes, and jealousy and envy sometimes, too, or you wouldn't be women like the rest of us, ma'am. . . . As for MaryO'Neill, _she_ has something better to do too, I'm thinking. . . . Afterdoing wrong, is she? Maybe she is, the _boght millish_, maybe we allare, ma'am, and have need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I neverheard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. Andif it is, I wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying aswell when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they'resaying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . . "

Another interruption and then--"There's Bella Kinnish herself who keepsthe corner shop, ma'am. Her husband was lost at the 'mackerel' two yearsfor Easter. He left her with three little children and a baby unborn, and Bella's finding it middling hard to get a taste of butcher's meat, or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma'am. And when she'ssitting late at night, as the doctor's telling me, and all the rest ofthe village dark, darning little Liza's stockings, and patching littleWillie's coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it's down with themeasles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some ofyour nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneelbefore the tabernacle. "

There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both FatherDan's and the Reverend Mother's), and then came Christian Ann's clearnotes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes threatening to stop. 

"What's that you're saying, ma'am? . . . Motherhood a sacred and holystate also? 'Deed it is, ma'am! That's truth enough too, though someones who shut themselves up in convents don't seem to think so. . . . Amother's a mother, and what's more, her child is her child, wedlock orno wedlock. And if she's doing right by her little one, and bringing itup well, and teaching it true, I don't know that when her time comes theLord will be asking her which side of her wedding-day it was bornon. . . . 

"As for Mary O'Neill, ma'am, when you're talking and talking about hersaving her soul, you're forgetting she has her child to save too, ma'am. God gave her the _boght villish_, and is she to run away from it? It's afine blessing would be on her for that, isn't it? . . . Father Dan, I'msurprised at you--such a terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing asyou're thinking. I thought you were a better man than that--I reallydid. . . . And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they're nomothers at all and never will be--tempting a poor woman in her troubleto leave her child to be a charge on other people. . . . "

Still another rumble of soft voices and then--

"Not that I'm thinking of myself, ma'am. Dear heart, no! It's only tooeager I'd be to have the lil angel to myself. There she is on thehearthrug, ma'am, and if anything happens to Mary O'Neill, it's thereshe'll be for the rest of _my_ life, and it's sorry I am for thedarling's sake that my time cannot be longer. . . . 

"But Mary O'Neill isn't for leaving her little one to go into anyconvent. 'Deed no, ma'am! There would be no rest on her if she did. I'ma mother myself and I know what she'd be feeling. You might put theblack hood on her head, but Nature's a wonderful powerful thing, andshe'd never go to bed at night or get up in the morning without thinkingof her baby. 'Where's she now?' she'd be asking herself. 'What'shappening to my motherless child?' she'd be saying. And as the yearswent on she'd be thinking, 'Is she well, and has she taken her firstcommunion, and is she growing up a good woman, and what's the worlddoing on her?' . . . 

"No, ma'am, no! Mary O'Neill will go into no convent while her child ishere to be cared for! 'Deed she won't! Not Mary O'Neill! I'll neverbelieve it of her! Never in this world!"

I heard nothing more for a long time after that--nothing but a noise inmy own head which drowned all other noises. And when I recovered mycomposure the Reverend Mother and Father Dan must have gone, for therewas no sound in the room below except that of the rocking-chair (whichwas going rapidly) and Christian Ann's voice, fierce but broken as ifbaby had cried and she was comforting her. 

Then a great new spirit came to me. It was Motherhood again! The mightypassion of motherhood--which another mighty passion had temporarilyoverlaid--sweeping down on me once more out of the big, simple, child-like heart of my Martin's mother. 

In the fever of body and brain at that moment it seemed to solve all theproblems of life for me. 

If the Commandment of God forbade me to marry again because I hadalready taken vows before the altar (no matter how innocently or underwhat constraint), and if I had committed a sin, a great sin, and babywas the living sign of it, there was only one thing left me to do--toremain as I was and consecrate the rest of my life to my child. 

That would be the real expiation, not burying myself in a convent. Tolive for my child! Alone with her! Here, where my sin had been, to workout my atonement!

This pleased and stirred and uplifted me very much when I first thoughtof it. And even when I remembered Martin, and thought how hard it wouldbe to tear myself away from the love which waited with open arms for me(So near, so sweet, so precious), there seemed to be something majestic, almost sublime, in the sacrifice I was about to make--the sacrifice ofeverything in the world (except one thing) that was dearer to me thanlife itself. 

A sort of spiritual pride came with the thought of this sacrifice. I sawmyself as a woman who, having pledged herself to God in her marriage andsinned against the law in breaking her marriage vows, was now going toaccept her fate and to humble herself before the bar of Eternal Justice. 

But oh, what a weak, vain thing I was, just when I thought I was sostrong and noble!

After a long day in which I had been fighting back the pains of my poortorn heart and almost persuading myself that I had won a victory, aletter came by the evening post which turned all my great plans to dustand ashes. 

The letter was from Martin. Only four little pages, written in mydarling's rugged hand, half serious and half playful, yet they made theearth rock and reel beneath me. 

 "MY DEAR LITTLE WOMAN, --_Just back from Windsor. Stunning 'do. ' Tell you all about it when I get back home. Meantime up to my eyes in work. Arrangements for next Expedition going ahead splendidly. Had a meeting of the committee yesterday and settled to sail by the 'Orient' third week in August, so as to get down to Winter Quarters in time to start south in October. 

 "Our own little affair has got to come off first, though, so I'll see the High Bailiff as soon as I return. 

 "And what do you think, my 'chree'? The boys of the 'Scotia' are all coming over to Ellan for the great event. 'Deed, yes, though, every man-jack of them! Scientific staff included, not to speak of O'Sullivan and old Treacle--who swears you blew a kiss to him. They remember you coming down to Tilbury. Aw, God bless me soul, gel, the way they're talking of you! There's no holding them at all at all!

 "Seriously, darling, you have no time to lose in making your preparations. My plan is to take you to New Zealand and leave you at Wellington (good little town, good people, too) while I make my bit of a trip to the Pole. 

 "We'll arrange about Girlie when I reach home, which will be next week, I hope--or rather fear--for every day is like a month when I'm away from you. 

 "But never mind, little woman! Once I get this big Expedition over we are not going to be separated any more. Not for a single day as long as we live, dearest! No, by the Lord God--life's too short for it. _

 "MART. "

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

After I had read this letter I saw that my great battle, which I hadsupposed to be over, was hardly begun. 

Martin was coming home with his big heart full of love for me, and myown heart ran out to meet him. 

He intended to sail for New Zealand the second week in August, and heexpected to take me with him. 

In spite of all my religious fears and misgivings, I asked myself why Ishould 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 ofthe Divine law that I had defied and broken?

My love was mine and I was his, and I belonged to him for ever. He wasgoing out on a great errand in the service of humanity. Couldn't I go tobe his partner and helpmate? And if there _had_ been sin, if the law ofGod _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 ofthe Church, or whatever else it was that brought me back and back, againand again, in spite of all the struggles of my love, to the firmCommandment of our Lord. 

Father Dan had been right--I could not get away from that. The ReverendMother had been right, too--other women might forget that they hadbroken the Divine law but I never should. If I married Martin and wentaway with him, I should always be thinking of the falseness of myposition, and that would make me unhappy. It would also make Martinunhappy to witness my unhappiness, and that would be the worstbitterness life could bring. 

Then what was left to me? If it was impossible that I should bury myselfin a convent it was equally impossible that I should live alone, andMartin in the same world with me. 

Not all the spiritual pride I could conjure up in the majesty andsolemnity of my self-sacrifice could conquer the yearning of my heart asa woman. Not all my religious fervour could keep me away from Martin. Inspite of my conscience, sooner or later I should go to him--I knew quitewell I should. And my child, instead of being a barrier dividing us, would be a natural bond calling on us and compelling us to cometogether. 

Then what was left to a woman in my position who believed in the DivineCommandment--who could not get away from it? Were all the doors of lifelocked to her? Turn which way she would, was there no way out?

Darker and darker every day became this question, but light came atlast, a kind of light or the promise of light. It was terrible, and yetit brought me, oh, such immense relief!

I am almost afraid to speak of it, so weak and feeble must any words bein which I attempt to describe that unforgetable change. Already I hadmet 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 toomuch for my physical strength, for three days after the arrival ofMartin's letter I seemed to be really ill. 

I am ashamed to dwell on my symptoms, but for a moment I am forced to doso. My eyes were bright, my cheeks were coloured, and there was nooutward indication of any serious malady. But towards evening I alwayshad 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 themorning there was great exhaustion. 

Old Doctor Conrad, who had been coming to me twice a day, began to lookvery grave. At last, after a short examination, he said, rathernervously:

"I should like a colleague from Blackwater to consult with me. Will youreceive him?"

I said "Yes" on one condition--that if the new doctor had anythingserious to say he should report it first to me. 

A little reluctantly Martin's father agreed to my terms and theconsulting physician was sent for. He came early the next day--abeautiful Ellan morning with a light breeze from the sea bringing thesmell of new-mown hay from the meadows lying between. 

He was an elderly man, and I could not help seeing a shadow cross hisclean-shaven face the moment his eyes first fell on me. They were thosetender but searching eyes which are so often seen in doctors, who arealways walking through the Valley of the Shadow and seem to focus theirgaze accordingly. 

Controlling his expression, he came up to my bed and, taking the hand Iheld 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 itwas nice of him to remember it), and said I hoped I should not be toorestless. 

While he took out and fixed his stethoscope (he had such beautiful softhands) 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 sameplace), and when it was over and he raised his face I thought it lookedstill 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 costyou. "

I admitted that also. He looked round to see if there was anybody elsein the room (there was only the old doctor, who was leaning over the endof the bed, watching the face of his colleague) and then said, in a lowvoice:

"Has it ever happened that you have suffered from privation and hardwork and loss of sleep and bad lodgings and . . . And exposure?"

His great searching eyes seemed to be looking straight into my soul, andI 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 Endand Ilford. 

"And did you get wet sometimes, very wet, through all your clothes?" heasked me. 

I told him No, but suddenly remembering that during the cold days afterbaby came (when I could not afford a fire) I had dried her napkins on mybody, 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 littleashamed, and my tears rising. 

"Ah!" he said, and then turning to the old doctor, "What a mother willdo for her child, Conrad!"

The eyes of Doctor Conrad (which seemed to have become swollen) werestill fixed on the face of his colleague, and, speaking as if he hadforgotten 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, hewent downstairs and Martin's father followed him. 

Nurse came up while they were away (she had taken possession of meduring the last few days), and I asked her who were in theparlour-kitchen. 

"Only Father Donovan and Mrs. Conrad--and baby, " she told me. 

Then the doctors came back--the consultant first, trying to lookcheerful, 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 therewas 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 havewished to live a little longer--especially now when (but for theCommandment of God) love and happiness seemed to be within my grasp. 

But oh, the relief! There was something sacred in it, somethingsupernatural. It was as if God Himself had come down to me in thebewildering maze that was haunted by the footsteps of my fate and led meout of it. 

Yet why these poor weak words? They can mean so little to anybody excepta 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, Iremembered, and none for baby. The only regret I felt was for Martin--heloved 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 toomuch trouble. Doctor Conrad seemed crushed into stupefaction and saidnothing; but the strange doctor tried to comfort me by saying therewould be no pain, and that my malady was of a kind that would probablymake no outward manifestation. 

Being a woman to the end I was very glad of that, and then I asked himif it would last long. He said No, not long, he feared, althougheverything 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 soundof crying. It was Christian Ann, and Father Dan was hushing her. I knewwhat was happening--the good souls were listening at the bottom of thestairs. 

My first impulse was to send nurse to say they were not to cry. Then Ihad half a mind to laugh, so that they might hear me and know that whatI 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 tosay to them. 

After a moment they came into the room, Christian Ann in her simple puredress, and Father Dan in his shabby sack coat, both looking verysorrowful, the sweet old children. 

Then (my two dear friends standing together at the foot of the bed) Itold them what the doctor had said, and warned them that they were totell 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, butthey gave me their word and that was all I wanted. 

"My boy! My poor boy _veen!_ He's thinking there isn't another woman inthe world like her, " said Christian Ann. 

And then Father Dan said something about my mother extracting the samepromise 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 againsome 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 ofthem on earth, you know. "

That was on the fifth of July, old Midsummer Day, which is our nationalday in Ellan, and flags were flying over many of the houses in thevillage. 

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

JULY 6. I feel so much better to-day. I hardly know what reaction of mywhole being, physical and spiritual, has set in since yesterday, but myheart is lighter than for a long time, and sleep, which I had come tolook upon as a lost blessing, came to me last night for four solidhours--beautiful and untroubled as a child's. 

 * * * * *

JULY 8. Martin writes that he expects to be here on the 12th. Letterfull of joyous spirits. "Lots to tell you when I reach home, dearest. "Strange! No mortal can imagine how anxious I am to get him back, yet Ialmost dread his coming. When he was away before, Time could not go fastenough for me. Now it is going too fast. I know what that means--thestory I have to tell. How am I to tell it?

 * * * * *

JULY 10. Only two days more and Martin will be here. Of course I must beup when he arrives. Nurse says No, but I say Yes. To be in bed when hecomes would be too much a shock for him. 

"Servants are such domineering tyrants, " says Christian Ann, who neverhad but one, and "the strange woman" was such a phantom in the housethat the poor mistress was grateful to God when Hollantide came roundand the ghost walked away of itself. My nurse is a dear, though. Howglad I am now that I persuaded Christian Ann to let her stay. 

 * * * * *

JULY 12. Martin comes to-day, and the old doctor (with such a proud andstately step) has gone off to Blackwater to meet him. I am terribly weak(no pain whatever), but perfectly resolute on dressing and goingdownstairs towards tea-time. I shall wear a white tea-gown, which SisterMildred gave me in London. Martin likes me best in white. 

 * * * * *

LATER. My Martin has come! We had counted it up that travelling acrossthe island by motor-car he would arrive at five, so I was dressed anddownstairs by four, sitting in the _chiollagh_ and watching the roadthrough the window opposite. But he was half an hour late, and ChristianAnn and I were in such a fever that anybody would have believed it to behalf a century and that the world had stood still. 

We might have known what would happen. At Blackwater "the boys" (thesame that "got up the spree" when Martin went away) had insisted on ademonstration. Then, on reaching our village, Martin had got down andshaken hands with everybody--the joiner and the grocer and theblacksmith and the widow who keeps the corner shop--so that it had takenhim a quarter of an hour to get through, amid a general chorus of "Theboy he is, though!" and "No pride at all at all!"

After that he drove home at top speed, and my quick ears caught themusical hum of the motor as it crossed the bridge. Good gracious, whatexcitement!

"Quick nurse, help me to the gate. "

I got there just in time to hear a shout, and to see a precipitate boundout of the car and then . . . What an embrace!

It is such a good thing my Martin is a big, brawny person, for I don'tknow how I should have got back to the house, being so weak andbreathless just then, if his strong arm had not been round my waist. 

Dr. O'Sullivan had come too, looking as gay as a humming-bird, and afterI had finished with Martin I kissed him also (having such a largesse ofaffection to distribute generally), whereupon he blushed like a boy, bless him, and stammered out something about St. Patrick and St. Thomas, and how he wouldn't have believed anybody who had said there wasanything so sweet, etc. 

Martin said I was looking so well, and he, too, declared he wouldn'thave believed any man who had sworn I could have looked so much betterin the time. 

My nervous thermometer must have gone up by leaps and bounds during thenext hour, for immediately after tea the old doctor ordered me back tobed, though I refused to go until he had faithfully promised that thedoor to the staircase should be kept open, so that I could hear what wassaid downstairs. 

What lots of fun they had there! Half the parish must have come in "toput a sight" on Martin after his investiture, including old Tommy theMate, who told everybody over and over again that he had "known the ladsince he was a lump" and "him and me are same as brothers. "

The old doctor's stately pride must have been something to see. It was"Sir Martin" here and "Sir Martin" there, until I could have cried tohear him. I felt just as foolish myself, too, for though I cannotremember that my pulse gave one extra beat when they made me "yourladyship, " now that Martin has become. . . . But that's what we womenare, you see!

At length Martin's big voice came up clear above the rest, and then thetalk was about the visit to Windsor. Christian Ann wanted to know if hewasn't "freckened" to be there, "not being used of Kings, " whereupon hecried:

"What! Frightened of another man--and a stunning good one, too!"

And then came a story of how the King had asked if he hadn't been infear of icebergs, and how he had answered No, you could strike more ofthem in a day in London (meaning icy-hearted people) than in a life-timein the Antarctic. 

I suppose I must have laughed at that, for the next I heard was:

"Hush! Isn't that Mary!"

"Aw, yes, the poor _veg veen_, " said a sad voice. It was ChristianAnn's. At the bottom of her heart I shall always be the child who "sangcarvals to her door. "

What a wonderful day! I shall not sleep a wink to-night, though. To-morrow I must tell him. 

 * * * * *

JULY 13. I intended to tell Martin this morning, but I really couldn't. 

I was going downstairs to breakfast, holding on to the bannisters at oneside and using nurse's shoulder as my other crutch, when I saw thebrightest picture I have ever beheld. Baby and Martin were on hands andknees on the rag-work hearthrug, face to face--Martin calling her tocome, Isabel lifting up her little head to him, like a fledgling in anest, and both laughing with that gurgling sound as of water bubblingout of a bottle. 

This sight broke all the breath out of me at the very first moment. Andwhen Martin, after putting me into my place in the _chiollagh_, plungedimmediately into a rapturous account of his preparations for ourdeparture--how we were to be married by special license at the HighBailiff's on the tenth (if that date would do), how I was to rest a dayand then travel up to London on the twelfth, and then rest other fourdays (during which warm clothes could be bought for me), and sail by the_Orient_ on the sixteenth--I could not find it in my heart to tell himthen of the inexorable fate that confronted us. 

It was cowardice, I knew, and sooner or later I should have to pay forit. But when he went on to talk about baby, and appealed to his motherto say if she wouldn't look after Girlie when I was gone, and ChristianAnn (in such a different tone) said Yes, she would look after Girliewhen I was gone, I decided that I dared not tell him at all--I would dierather than do so. 

The end of it all is that I have arranged with Christian Ann, the olddoctor, and Father Dan that Time and Martin's own observation are totell him what is going to happen, and none of us are to say anythingabout it. 

What a deceiver I am, though! I put it all down to my unselfish love forMartin. It would be such a blow to him--disturbing his plans, upsettingeverything, perhaps causing him to postpone his Expedition, or even toabandon it altogether. "Let the truth fall soft on him. He'll see itsoon enough. Don't let us be cruel. "

The dear sweet, unsuspecting old darlings have taken it all in--all myvain and cowardly selfishness. I am to play the part of pretending tofall in with Martin's plans, and they are to stand by and say nothing. 

Can I do it? I wonder, I wonder!

 * * * * *

JULY 15. I am becoming quite a great actress! It's astonishing to seehow I develop my deceptions under all sorts of veils and disguises. 

Martin told me to-day that he had given up the idea of leaving me atWellington and had determined to take me on to Winter Quarters, havingmet, on the way to Windsor, some great specialist in my kind of malady(I wonder how much he knows of it), who declared that the climate of theAntarctic would act on me like magic. 

Such glorious sunshine in summer! Such crisp, dry, stimulating air! Newlife with every breath! Such a stunning little house, too, so cosy andcomfortable! And then the men whom he would leave behind while heslipped down South--they would worship me!

"How splendid! How glorious!" I cried. "How delightful to be mistressover a houseful of big, hungry, healthy boys, who come in out of thesnow and want to eat up everything!"

Sometimes I feel myself being carried away by my own acting, and then Isee the others (Christian Ann and the old doctor and Father Dan)dropping their heads or stealing out of the room. 

I wish I were not so weak. I feel no pain whatever. Only thistemperature during the nights and the ever-deepening exhaustion in themornings. 

 * * * * *

JULY 16. I am keeping it up! To-day I was alone with Martin for a longhour in the garden-house. Weather soft and beautiful, the heavens blue, and gleams of sunshine coming through the trellis-work. 

Merely to sit beside my darling with his odour of health is to feel aflood of bodily strength coursing through me, enough to make me forgetthat I am a frail thing myself, who could be blown away by a puff ofwind. But to hear him talk on his own subject is to be lifted up to thehighest reaches of the soul. 

I always say there is a dumb poet in every explorer; but the poet wasn'tdumb to-day when Martin talked about the cyclone or anticyclone, orwhatever it is which covers the region of the South Pole like a cap, anddetermines the weather of a great part of the habitable globe. 

"We are going to take from God his word and pass it on to the world, " hesaid. 

After that he made reference (for the first time since his return) tothe difficulties of our position, saying what a glorious thing it wouldbe to escape to that great free region from the world of civilisation, with its effete laws and worn-out creeds which enslave humanity. 

"Only a month to-day until we start, and you'll be well enough to travelthen, dearest. "

"Yes, yes, only a month to-day, and I shall be well enough then, dearest. "

Oh, Mary O'Neill! How much longer will you be able to keep it up, dear?

 * * * * *

JULY 17. Martin brought the proofs of his new book from London, andto-day in the summer-house (bluebells paling out and hanging theirheads, but the air full of the odour of fruit trees) he and Dr. O'Sullivan and I have been correcting "galleys"--the doctor readingaloud, Martin smoking his briar-root pipe, and I (in a crater ofcushions) supposed to be sitting as judge and jury. 

Such simple, straight, natural writing! There may have been a thousanderrors but my ears heard none of them. The breathless bits about themoments when death was near; the humorous bits about patching the tentwith the tails of their shirts when an overturned lamp burnt a hole inthe canvas--this was all I was conscious of until I was startled by thesound of a sepulchral voice, groaning out "Oh Lord a-massy me!" and bythe sight of a Glengarry cap over the top of the fuchsia hedge. OldTommy was listening from the road. 

We sat late over our proofs and then, the dew having begun to fall, Martin said he must carry me indoors lest my feet should get wet--whichhe did, with the result that, remembering what had happened on our firstevening at Castle Raa, I had a pretty fit of hysterics as soon as wereached the house. 

"Let's skip, Commanther, " was the next thing I heard, and then I washelped upstairs to bed. 

 * * * * *

JULY 18. What a flirt I am becoming! Having conceived the idea that Dr. O'Sullivan is a little wee bit in love with me too, I have been playinghim off against Martin. 

It was so delicious (after all I have gone through) to have twomagnificent men, out of the heroic youth of the world, waiting hand andfoot on one little woman, that the feminine soul in me to-day couldn'tresist the temptation to an innocent effort at coquetry. 

So before we began business on the proofs I told Martin that, if he wasdetermined to leave me behind at winter quarters while he went away tothe Pole, he must allow Dr. O'Sullivan to remain behind to take care ofme. 

Of course the doctor rose to my bait like a dear, crying:

"He will too--by St. Patrick and St. Thomas he will, and a mighty proudman he'll be entirely. . . . "

But good gracious! A momentary shadow passed over Martin's face, thencame one of his big broad smiles, then out shot his clinched fist, and. . . The poor doctor and his garden seat were rolling over each other onthe grass. 

However, we got through without bloodshed, and did good day's work onthe book. 

I must not write any more. I have always written in my own book atnight, when I haven't been able to get any kind of Christian sleep; butI'm weaker now, so must stop, lest I shouldn't have strength enough forMartin's. 

 * * * * *

JULY 20. Oh dear! I am dragging all these other poor dears into mydeceptions. Christian Ann does not mind what lies, or half-lies, she hasto tell in order to save pain to her beloved son. But the old doctor!And Father Dan!

To-day itself, as Martin's mother would say, I had to make my poor oldpriest into a shocking story-teller. 

I developed a cough a few weeks ago, and though it is not really of muchaccount I have been struggling to smother it while Martin has beenabout, knowing he is a doctor himself, and fearing his ear might detectthe note. 

But this afternoon (whether a little damp, with a soft patter of sweetrain on the trees and the bushes) I had a rather bad bout, at whichMartin's face looked grave, until I laughed and said:

"It's nothing! I've had this sort of cough every summer since I wasborn--haven't I, Father Dan?"

"Ye-es. "

I shall have to remember that in my next confession, but what Father Danis to do I really don't know. 

 * * * * *

JULY 21. I have been rather down to-day about a newspaper that came tome anonymously from Paris, with a report marked for my specialdelectation. 

"FASHIONABLE MARRIAGE OF AN ENGLISH PEER AND AN AMERICAN HEIRESS. "

My husband's and Alma's! It took place at the American Embassy, and wasattended by great numbers of smart people. There was a long account ofthe grandeur of the bride's dress and of the splendour of thebridegroom's presents. They have taken an apartment on the ChampsElysées and will spend most of the year in Paris. 

Ah well, why should I trouble about a matter that so little concerns me?Alma is still beautiful; she will be surrounded by admirers; her salonwill be frequented by the fashionable parasites of Europe and America. 

As for my husband, the straw-fire of his wife's passion for him willsoon burn out, especially now that she has gained what she wanted--hisname, his title. 

 * * * * *

Martin carried me upstairs to bed to-night. I was really feeling weakerthan usual, but we made a great game of it. Nurse went first, behind amountain of pillows; Martin and I came next, with his arms about my bodyand mine around his neck; and Dr. O'Sullivan last, carrying two tallbrass candlesticks. 

How we laughed! We all laughed together, as if trying to see which of uscould laugh the loudest. Only Christian Ann looked serious, standing atthe bottom of the stairs, nursing baby in her nightdress. 

It is three o'clock in the morning as I write, and I can hear ourlaughter still--only it sounds like sobbing now. 

 * * * * *

JULY 22. Have heard something to-day that has taken all the warmth oflife out of me. It is about my father, whom the old doctor stillattends. Having been told of my husband's marriage he has announced hisintention of claiming my child if anything happens to me!

What his object may be I do not know. He cannot be thinking ofestablishing a claim to my husband's title--Isabel being a girl. Remembering something his lawyer said about the marriage settlement whenI consulted him on the subject of divorce, I can only assume that (nowhe is poor) he is trying to recover the inheritance he settled on myhusband. 

It frightens me--raising my old nightmare of a lawsuit about thelegitimacy of my child. I want to speak to Martin about it. Yet how canI do so without telling him the truth which I have been struggling sohard to conceal?

 * * * * *

JULY 23. Oh, Mary O'Neill, what are you coming to?

I told Martin about father's threat, only I gave it another colour. Hehad heard of the Reverend Mother's visit, so I said the rumour hadreached my father that I intended to enter a convent, and he haddeclared that, if I did so, he would claim my child from Christian Ann, being its nearest blood relation. 

"Can he do so--when I am . . . When we are gone?" I asked. 

I thought Martin's strong face looked sterner than I had ever seen it. He made a vague reply and left me soon afterwards on some sort ofexcuse. 

About an hour later he came back to carry me upstairs, and just as hewas setting me down, and Christian Ann was coming in with the candles, he whispered:

"Don't worry about Girlie. I've settled that matter, I'm thinking. "

What has he done, I wonder?

MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD

What I had done is easily told. I had gone straight to Daniel O'Neillhimself, intending to know the truth of the story and to actaccordingly. 

Already I knew enough to scent mischief. I could not be so stupefiedinto blindness of what was going on under my eyes as not to see that thedirty question of money, and perhaps the dirtier question of the aimsand expectations of the woman MacLeod, were at the root of the matterthat was distressing my darling. 

Daniel O'Neill had left the Big House and gone to live in his mother'sold cottage for two reasons--first, to delude the law into the idea thathe was himself utterly ruined by the bankruptcy to which he had broughtthe whole island; and next, to gratify the greed of his mistress, whowanted to get him to herself at the end, so that he might be persuadedto marry her (if it were only on his death-bed) and so establish, against any claim of his daughter's, her widow's rights in what ahusband leaves behind him--which is half of everything in Ellan. 

What connection this had with the man's desire to get hold of the childI had yet to learn; but I meant to learn it without another hour'sdelay, so I set off for the cottage on the curragh. 

It was growing dark, and not being sure of my way through theever-changing bypaths of the bog land, I called on Father Dan to guideme. The old priest seemed to know my errand (the matter my darling hadcommunicated as a secret being common knowledge), and at first he lookedafraid. 

"Well . . . Yes, yes . . . Why shouldn't I?" he said, and then, "Yes, Iwill, I will"--with the air of a man who had made up his mind to adaring enterprise. 

Our curragh is a stretch of wild marsh lying over against the sea, undrained, only partly cultivated, half covered with sedge and sallowbushes, and consequently liable to heavy mists. There was a mist over itthat night, and hence it was not easy even for Father Dan (accustomed tomidnight visits to curragh cottages) to find the house which had oncebeen the home of "Neale the Lord. "

We rooted it out at last by help of the parish constable, who wasstanding at the corner of a by-road talking to the coachman of agorgeous carriage waiting there, with its two splendid horses smoking inthe thick night air. 

When, over the shingle of what we call "the street, " we reached the lowstraggling crofter-cottage under its thick trammon tree (supposed tokeep off the evil spirits), I rapped with my knuckles at the door, andit was opened by a tall scraggy woman with a candle in her hand. 

This was Nessy MacLeod, harder and uglier than ever, with her red haircombed up, giving her the appearance of a bunch of carrots over twostalks of rhubarb. 

Almost before I had time to say that we had come to see Mr. O'Neill, andto step into the house while saying so, a hoarse, husky, querulous man'svoice cried from within:

"Who is it, Nessy?"

It's Father Dan, and Martin . . . I mean Sir. . . . "

"That'll do, " I said, and the next moment we were in the living-room--abare, bleak, comfortless Curraghman's kitchen. 

A more incongruous sight than we saw there human eyes never beheld. 

Daniel O'Neill, a shadow of the big brute creature he once was, ashrivelled old man, with his bony hands scored and contracted like anautumn leaf, his shrunken legs scarcely showing through his baggytrousers, his square face whiter than the wall behind it, and a piece ofred flannel hanging over his head like a cowl, sat in the elbow-chair atthe side of the hearth-fire, while at a deal table, which was coveredwith papers that looked like law deeds and share certificates (beingstamped and sealed), sat the Bishop of the island, and its leadinglawyer, Mr. Curphy. 

On hearing my name and seeing me enter the house, Daniel O'Neill lostall control of himself. He struggled to his feet by help of a stick, andas I walked up to him he laid hold of me. 

"You devil!" he cried. "You infernal villain! You. . . . "

But it is of no use to repeat what else he said in the fuming of hisrage, laying hold of me by the collar of my coat, and tugging at it asif he would drag me to his feet. 

I was half sorry for the man, badly as I thought of him, so I onlyopened his hand (easy enough to do, for the grip was gone from it) andsaid:

"You're an old man, sir, and you're a sick man--don't tempt me to forgetthat you are the father of Mary O'Neill. Sit down. "

He sat down, breathless and broken, without another word. But theBishop, with a large air of outraged dignity, faced about to poor FatherDan (who was standing near the door, turning his round hat in histrembling hands) and said:

"Father Donovan, did you know that Mr. O'Neill was very ill?"

"I did, Monsignor, " said Father Dan. 

"And that a surgeon is coming from London to perform an operation uponhim--did you know that?"

"I did, Monsignor. "

"Did you know also that I was here to-night to attend with Mr. Curphy toimportant affairs and perhaps discharge some sacred duties?"

"I knew that too, Monsignor. "

"Then, " said the Bishop, pointing at me, "how dare you bring this manhere--this man of all others, who has been the chief instrument inbringing shame and disgrace upon our poor sick friend and his deeplyinjured family?"

"So that's how you look at it, is it, Monsignor?"

"Yes, sir, that is how I look at it, and I am sorry for a priest of myChurch who has so weakened his conscience by sympathy with notorioussinners as to see things in any other light. "

"Sinners, Bishop?"

"Didn't you hear me, Father Donovan? Or do you desire me to use a hardername for them--for one of them in particular, on whom you have wasted somuch weak sentimentality, to the injury of your spiritual influence andthe demoralisation of your parish. I have warned you already. Do youwish me to go further, to remove you from your Presbytery, or perhapsreport your conduct to those who have power to take the frock off yourback? What standard of sanctity for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony doyou expect to maintain while you degrade it by openly associating with awoman who has broken her marriage vows and become little better . . . Igrieve to say it [with a deep inclination of the head towards the poorwreck in the elbow-chair] little better than a common. . . . "

I saw the word that was coming, and I was out in an instant. But therewas somebody before me. It was Father Dan. The timid old priest seemedto break in one moment the bonds of a life-long tyranny. 

"What's that you say, Monsignor?" he cried in a shrill voice. "_I_degrade the sacrament of Holy Matrimony? Never in this world! But ifthere's anybody in the island of Ellan who has done that same every dayof his life, it's yourself, and never more cruelly and shamefully thanin the case we're talking of at this present speaking. "

"I'm not used to this kind of language from my clergy, Father Donovan, "began the Bishop, but before he could say more Father Dan caught him upby crying:

"Perhaps not, Monsignor. But you've got to hear for once, and that'snow. When this man [pointing to Daniel O'Neill] for his own purposeswanted to marry his daughter (who was a child and had no choice in thematter) to one of another faith, a man who didn't believe in thesacrament of marriage as we know it, who was it that paved the way forhim?"

"You actually mean that _I_. . . . "

"I mean that without your help, Monsignor, a good girl could never havebeen married to a bad man. You didn't act in ignorance, either. Whensomebody told you--somebody who is here now--that the man to whom youwere going to marry that innocent girl was a notorious loose liver, aprofligate, a reprobate, a betrayer of women, and a damnedscoundrel. . . . "

"Go on, Father Dan; that's God's own name for him, " I said, when the oldpriest caught his breath for a moment, terrified by the word that hadburst from his lips. 

"Let's have an end of this, " said the Bishop mightily. 

"Wait a bit, sir, " I said, and then Father Dan went on to say how he hadbeen told there was nothing to my story, and how he had been forbiddento inquire into it. 

"That's how you made _me_ a party to this wicked marriage, God and hisHoly Mother pardon me! And now that it has come to the end you mighthave expected, and the poor helpless child who was bought and sold likea slave is in the position of the sinner, you want me to cut her off, toturn the hearts of all good people against her, to cast her out ofcommunion, to make her a thing to point the finger at--me, her spiritualfather who baptized her, taking her out of the arms of the angel whobore her and giving her to Christ--or if I won't you'll deprive me of myliving, you'll report me to Rome, you'll unfrock me. . . . "

"Do it, Monsignor, " cried Father Dan, taking a step nearer to the Bishopand lifting a trembling hand over his head. "Do it, if our holy Churchwill permit you, and I'll put a wallet on my old shoulders and go roundthe houses of my parish in my old age, begging a bite of bread and abasin of meal, and sleeping under a thorn bush, rather than lay my headon my pillow and know that that poor victim of your wicked scheming isin the road. "

The throbbing and breaking of the old priest's voice had compelled me todrop my head, and it was not until I heard the sneck of the lock of theouter door that I realised that, overcome by his emotion, he had fledfrom the house. 

"And now I guess you can follow your friend, " said Daniel O'Neill. 

"Not yet, sir, " I answered; "I have something to say first. "

"Well, well, what is it, please?" said the lawyer sharply andinsolently, looking to where I was standing with folded arms at one sideof the hearth-place. 

"You'll hear soon enough, Master Curphy, " I answered. 

Then, turning back to Daniel O'Neill, I told him what rumour had reachedmy dear one of his intentions with regard to her child, and asked him tosay whether there was any truth in it. 

"Answer the man, Curphy, " said Daniel O'Neill, and thereupon the lawyer, with almost equal insolence, turned to me and said:

"What is it you wish to know, sir?"

"Whether, if Mary O'Neill is unable from any cause to keep control ofher child (which God forbid!), her father intends to take possession ofit. "

"Why shouldn't he? If the mother dies, for instance, her father will bethe child's legal guardian. "

"But if by that time the father is dead too--what then?"

"Then the control of the child will--with the consent of thecourt--devolve upon his heir and representative. "

"Meaning this lady?" I asked, pointing to the woman MacLeod, who was nowstanding at the back of Daniel O'Neill's chair. 

"Possibly. "

"And what will she do with it?"

"Do with it?"

The lawyer was running his fingers through his long beard and trying tolook perplexed. 

"Mr. Curphy, I'll ask you not to pretend to be unable to understand me. If and when this lady gets possession of Mary O'Neill's child, what isshe going to do with it?"

"Very well, " said the advocate, seeing I meant business, "since myclient permits me to speak, I'll tell you plainly. Whatever the child'sactual parentage . . . Perhaps you know best. . . . "

"Go on, sir. "

"Whatever the child's parentage, it was born in wedlock. Even therecent divorce proceedings have not disturbed that. Therefore we holdthat the child has a right to the inheritance which in due time shouldcome to Mary O'Neill's offspring by the terms of the settlement upon herhusband. "

It was just as I expected, and every drop of my blood boiled at thethought of my darling's child in the hands of that frozen-hearted woman. 

"So that is the law, is it?"

"That is the law in Ellan. "

"In the event of Mary O'Neill's death, and her father's death, her childand all its interests will come into the hands of. . . . "

"Of her father's heir and representative. "

"Meaning, again, this lady?"

"Probably. "

The woman at the back of the chair began to look restless. 

"I don't know, sir, " she said, "if your repeated references to me areintended to reflect upon my character, or my ability to bring up thechild well and look after its interests properly. "

"They are, madam--they most certainly and assuredly are, " I answered. 

"Daniel!" she cried. 

"Be quiet, gel, " said Daniel O'Neill. "Let the man speak. We'll see whathe has come for presently. Go on, sir. "

I took him at his word, and was proceeding to say that as I understoodthings it was intended to appeal to the courts in order to recover(nominally for the child) succession to the money which had been settledon Mary O'Neill's husband at the time of their marriage, when the oldman cried, struggling again to his feet:

"There you are! The money! It's the money the man's after! He took mydaughter, and now he's for taking my fortune--what's left of it, anyway. He shan't, though! No, by God he shan't! . . . Go back to your woman, sir. Do you hear me?--your woman, and tell her that neither you nor sheshall touch one farthing of my fortune. I'm seeing to that now. It'swhat we're here for to-night--before that damnable operation to-morrow, for nobody knows what will come of it. She has defied me and ruined me, and made me the byword of the island, God's curse on her. . . . "

"Daniel! Daniel!" cried the MacLeod woman, trying to pacify theinfuriated madman and to draw him back to his seat. 

I would have given all I had in the world if Daniel O'Neill could havebeen a strong man at that moment, instead of a poor wisp of a thing withone foot in the grave. But I controlled myself as well as I could andsaid:

"Mr. O'Neill, your daughter doesn't want your fortune, and as formyself, you and your money are no more to me than an old hen sitting ona nest of addled eggs. Give it to the lady at the back of yourchair--she has earned it, apparently. "

"Really, " said the Bishop, who had at length recovered from Father Dan'sonslaught. "Really, Sir What-ever-your-name is, this is toooutrageous--that you should come to this lonely house at this time ofnight, interrupting most urgent business, not to speak of seriousoffices, and make injurious insinuations against the character of arespectable person--you, sir, who had the audacity to return openly tothe island with the partner of your sin, and to lodge her in the houseof your own mother--your own mother, sir, though Heaven knows what kindof mother it can be who harbours her son's sin-laden mistress, hiswoman, as our sick friend says. . . . "

Lord! how my hands itched! But controlling myself again, with a mightyeffort I said:

"Monsignor, I don't think I should advise you to say that again. "

"Why not, sir?"

"Because I have a deep respect for your cloth and should be sorry to seeit soiled. "

"Violence!" cried the Bishop, rising to his feet. "You threaten me withviolence? . . . Is there no policeman in this parish, Mr. Curphy?"

"There's one at the corner of the road, Bishop, " I said. "I brought himalong with me. I should have brought the High Bailiff too, if there hadbeen time. You would perhaps be no worse for a few witnesses to thebusiness that seems to be going on here. "

Saying this, as I pointed to the papers on the table, I had hit harderthan I knew, for both the Bishop and the lawyer (who had also risen)dropped back into their seats and looked at each other with expressionsof surprise. 

Then, stepping up to the table, so as to face the four of them, I said, as calmly and deliberately as I could:

"Now listen to me. I am leaving this island in about three weeks time, and expect to be two years--perhaps three years--away. Mary O'Neill isgoing with me--as my wife. She intends to leave her child in the care ofmy mother, and I intend to promise her that she may set her mind at easethat it shall never under any circumstances be taken away. You seem tohave made up your minds that she is going to die. Please God she maydisappoint your expectations and come back strong and well. But if shedoes not, and I have to return alone, and if I find that her child hasbeen removed from the protection in which she left it, do you know whatI shall do?"

"Go to the courts, I presume, " said the lawyer. 

"Oh dear, no! I'll go to no courts, Mr. Curphy. I'll go to the peoplewho have set the courts in motion--which means that I'll go to _you_ and_you_ and _you_ and _you_. Heaven knows how many of us may be livingwhen that day comes; but as surely as I am, if I find that the promise Imade to Mary O'Neill has been a vain one, and that her child is underthis woman's control and the subject of a lawsuit about this man'smoney, and she in her grave, as surely as the Lord God is above us thereisn't one soul of you here present who will be alive the followingmorning. "

That seemed to be enough for all of them. Even old Daniel O'Neill (theonly man in the house who had an ounce of fight in him) dropped his headback in his chair, with his mouth wide open and his broken teeth showingbehind his discoloured lips. 

I thought Father Dan would have been waiting for me under the trammon on"the street, " but he had gone back to the Presbytery and sent Tommy theMate to lead me through the mist and the by-lanes to the main road. 

The old salt seemed to have a "skute" into the bad business which hadbrought out the Bishop and the lawyer at that late hour, and on partingfrom me at the gate of Sunny Lodge he said:

"Lord-a-massy me, what for hasn't ould Tom Dug a fortune coming to him?"

And when I asked him what he would do with a fortune if he had one heanswered:

"Do? Have a tunderin' [thundering] good law-shoot and sattle some o'them big fellas. "

Going to bed in the "Plough" that night, I had an ugly vision of thescene being enacted in the cottage on the curragh (a scene not withoutprecedent in the history of the world, though the priesthood as a wholeis so pure and noble)--the midnight marriage of a man dying in unnaturalhatred of his own daughter (and she the sweetest woman in the world)while the priest and the prostitute divided the spoils. 

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

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 haddeferred too long, refusing to believe it necessary. 

The dreadful fact has hitherto been kept secret not only from me butfrom everybody, out of fear of legal proceedings arising from thefailure of banks, &c. , which has brought the whole island to the vergeof bankruptcy. 

He was buried this morning at old St. Mary's--very early, almost beforedaybreak, to suit the convenience of the Bishop, who wished to catch thefirst steamer _en route_ for Rome. 

As a consequence of these strange arrangements, and the secrecy that hassurrounded my father's life of late, people are saying that he is notdead at all, that in order to avoid prosecution he has escaped from theisland (going off with the Bishop in a sort of disguise), and that thecoffin 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 deadand buried, and the strange man who went away with the Bishop was theLondon surgeon who performed the operation. "

I can hardly realise it--that the strong, stalwart being, the stern oldlion whose heavy foot, tramping through my poor mother's room, used tomake 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 measuredby power), ranking, I think, in his own little scene of life with thetragic figures of history. 

I have spent the day in bitter grief. Ever since I was a child there hasbeen a dark shadow between my father and me. He was like a beetlingmountain, always hanging over my head. I wonder whether he wished to seeme at the end. Perhaps he did, and was over-persuaded by the cold andsavourless nature of Nessy MacLeod, who is giving it out, I hear, thatgrief and shame for me killed him. 

People will say he was a vulgar parvenu, a sycophant, a snob--heavenknows what. All wrong! For the true reading of his character one has togo back to the day when he was a ragged boy and the liveried coachman ofthe "bad Lord Raa" lashed at his mother on the road, and he swore thatwhen 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 thanTell to bend the knee to it. 

My poor father! He did wrong to use another life, another soul, foreither his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will be withhim, and if he was the first cause of making my life what it has been, Isend after him (I almost tremble to say it) if not my love, myforgiveness. 

 * * * * *

JULY 26. I begin to realise that after all I was not romancing when Itold the old dears that Martin and his schemes would collapse if Ifailed him. Poor boy, he is always talking as it everything dependedupon me. It is utterly frightening to think what would happen to theExpedition 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 hadsuffered eclipse, and then marry again before their graves are green. So, having begun on my great scheme of pretending that I am gettingbetter every day, and shall be "ready to go, never fear, " I have to keepit up. 

I begin to suspect, though, that I am not such a wonderful actress afterall. Sometimes in the midst of my raptures I see him looking at meuneasily as if he were conscious of a certain effort. At such moments Ihave to avoid his eyes lest anything should happen, for my great loveseems 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 wastalking about the voyage out, and how it would "set me up" and how theinvigorating air of the Antarctic would "make another woman of me, " Icried:

"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, andbeing answered rather sadly, I heard him say:

"_Ugh cha nee!_ [Woe is me!] What is life? It is even a vapour whichappeareth 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 carrythe 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 hopesand 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 thattheir highest impulse is the praise of achievement, and once they havedone something all they've got to do next is to stay at home and talkabout 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 beenwith 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 restin the green peace of English earth--dear and sweet as that is to tamernatures, mine for instance. I can only think of that wild heroic soulgoing up to God from the broad white wilderness of the stormy South, andleaving his body under heaving hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing arequiem over his grave. 

Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing heartmake 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 Bridgetand Nessy MacLeod. 

It seems that Nessy (who says she was married to my father immediatelybefore the operation) claims to be the heiress of all that is left, andas the estate includes the Big House she is "putting the law on" AuntBridget to obtain possession. 

Poor Aunt Bridget! What a pitiful end to all her scheming for BetsyBeauty, all her cruelties to my long-suffering mother, all hertreatment 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 livedbefore, and it's the black life she'll be living now, and her growingold, and the Death looking in on her. "

 * * * * *

JULY 29. We have finished the proofs to-day and Dr. O'Sullivan has goneback with them. I thought he looked rather _wae_ when he came to saygood-bye to me, and though he made a great deal of noise his voice washusky when (swearing by his favourite Saints) he talked about "returningfor the tenth with all the boys, including Treacle. "

Of course that was nonsense about his being in love with me. But I'msure he loves me all the same--many, many people love me. I don't knowwhat I've done to deserve all this love. I have had a great deal of lovein 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 atthe end of them, for when Martin carried me upstairs to-night there wasless laughter than usual, and I thought he looked serious as he set medown by the bed. 

I bantered him about that ("A penny for your thoughts, mister"), buttowards midnight the truth flashed upon me--I am becoming thinner andtherefore 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 meand the Expedition--which shall come off first--and sometimes I amafraid I am going to be the loser!

Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth--only seventeen days! I amexpected to be married on the tenth--only eleven! Oh, Mary O'Neill, whata 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 crossingfrom Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she intended, so I supposeFather Dan must have sent for her. 

I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together. A strugglebetween 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 afterdaybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who shouldcome into the room but the doctor from Blackwater!

He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again, so he hadtaken me at my word. 

I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that he wasutterly astonished--couldn't understand how I came to be alive--and saidhe would never again deny the truth of the old saying about dying of abroken 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 theroom, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and whispered "_When?_"

He wasn't for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of God whichno science could reckon with, but at last I got a word out of him whichmade me happy, or at least content. 

Perhaps it's sad, but many things look brighter that are far moresorrowful--dying of a broken heart, for example, and (whatever else isamiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed, gloriously healed, afterits bruises, so thank God for that, anyway!

 * * * * *

Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream! I thought mydarling mother came to me. "You're cold, my child, " she said, and thencovered me up in the bedclothes. I talked about leaving my baby, and shesaid she had had to do the same--leaving me. "That's what we motherscome 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 formuch surprise if nobody else understands me. In spite of what thestrange doctor said yesterday I dressed up grandly to-day, not only inmy tea-gown, but some beautiful old white Irish lace which nurse lent meto wrap about my throat. 

I think the effect was rather good, and when I went downstairs leaningon nurse's shoulder, there was Martin waiting for me, and though he didnot speak (couldn't perhaps), the look that came into his blue eyes wasthe same as on that last night at Castle Raa when he said somethingabout 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 Icould 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 alreadyanswered to all such questionings and beseechings, His great;unalterable, irrevocable No!

 * * * * *

AUGUST 2. The Reverend Mother, who arrived in the island last night, hasbeen with me all day. I think she _knows_, for she has said nothing moreabout the convent--only (with her eyes so soft and tender) that sheintends to remain with me a little while, having need of rest herself. 

To my surprise and joy, Martin and she have got on famously. Thisevening she told me that, in spite of all (I know what she meant bythat), she is willing to believe that he is a true man, and, notwithstanding his unhappy opinions about the Church, a Christiangentleman. 

Such a touching thing happened to-day. We were all sitting in thegarden, (sun warm, light breeze off the sea, ripe corn chattering in thefield opposite), when I felt a tugging at my skirts, and who should itbe but Isabel, who had been crawling along the dry grass pluckingdaisies, and now, dragging herself up to my side, emptied them into mylap. 

No, I will not give way to tears any more as long as I live, yet itrather "touches me up, " as Martin says, to see how one's vainest dreamsseem to come to pass. 

I don't know if Martin thought I was going to break down, but he rattledaway about Girlie having two other mothers now--Grandma, who would keepher while we were down South, and the Reverend Mother, who would takeher 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 goon with his preparations? isn't it a kind of cruelty not to tell him thetruth?

This problem is preying on my mind. If I could only get some real sleepperhaps I could solve it. 

 * * * * *

AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough; nothing butexhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was growing more thanever 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--awoman can see through and through him. 

Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel like babywhen 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. Itseems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of some sort ofcensure from Rome through his Bishop--about his toleration of me, Isuppose--but behold! it's the Bishop himself who has suffered censure, having been sent into quarantine at one of the Roman Colleges andforbidden 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 dearFather suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a generalthanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to old St. Mary'sand then Rosary and Benediction. 

It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my last dayin 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. Thismorning he told me he had bought the special license for our marriage, and this evening he showed me our tickets for Sydney--two berths, firstcabin, steadiest part of the ship. Oh, my dear heart, if you only knewthat I have had my ticket these many days, and that it is to take me outfirst on the Great Expedition--to the still bigger Unknown, theEverlasting Sea, the Immeasurable Eternity!

I must be brave. Although I am a little cowardly sometimes, I _can_ bebrave. 

I have definitely decided to-night that I will tell him. But how can Ilook into his face and say. . . . 

 * * * * *

AUGUST 7. I have made up my mind to write to Martin. One can say thingsso much easier in a letter--I can, anyway. Even my voice affectsme--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 inbed, but I can prop my book on my breast and write lying down. 

MARY O'NEILL'S LETTER TO MARTIN CONRAD

_August 9th_, 6 A. M. 

MY OWN DARLING, --Strengthen yourself for what I am going to say. It willbe very hard for you--I know that, dear. 

To-morrow we were to have gone to the High Bailiff; this day week wewere to have sailed for Sydney, and two months hence we were to havereached Winter Quarters. 

But I cannot go with you to the High Bailiff's; I cannot go with you toSydney; I cannot go with you to Winter Quarters; I cannot go anywherefrom 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 allfor you--has consumed me and I cannot live much longer. 

Forgive me for not telling you this before--for deceiving you by sayingthat I was getting better and growing stronger when I knew I was not. Iused 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 houseof love that I could not reconcile myself to the loss of it. You willtry to understand that (won't you, dear?), and so forgive me for keepingyou 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 saveyou a moment's pain, yet I could not die at ease if I did not think youwould miss me and grieve for me. I like to think that in the time tocome people will say, "Once he loved Mary O'Neill, and now there is noother woman in the world for him. " I should not be a woman if I did notfeel like that--should I?

But don't grieve too much, dearest. Only think! If I had been strong andhad years and years still to live, what a life would have been beforeme--before both of us. 

We couldn't have lived apart, could we? And if we had married I shouldnever have been able to shake off the thought that the world, whichwould always be opening its arms to you, did not want me. That would beso, wouldn't it--after all I have gone through? The world never forgivesa woman for the injuries it inflicts on her itself, and I have had toomany 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 loveof me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth and rank andease, and therefore I will choose her before everything else in theworld. " But I know what would come to us in the end, dear, and I shouldalways feel that your love for me had dragged you down, closed many ofthe doors of life to you. I should know that you were always hearingbehind you the echoing footsteps of my fate, and that is the only thingI could not bear. 

Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in thisworld--the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can never be manand 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 sinto do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it ismust know that I am doing no wrong. 

And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to answerto God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He will knowthat, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were trying to controlmy most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the right He gave me to bemistress of myself and sovereign of my soul. 

_You_ must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach yourself in anyway, for when we stand together before God's footstool He will see thatfrom the beginning I was yours and you were mine, and He will cover uswith the wings of His loving mercy. 

Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what happenedafterwards--first in Ellan and then in London--as, in any sense, apunishment. I have never done that at any time, and now I believe fromthe bottom of my heart that, if I suffered while you were away, it wasnot for my sin but my salvation. 

Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage, and ifI had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my soul wouldhave shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the souls of somany poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and degradinghusbands. 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 sweetand pure and noble love that has kept it alive. 

All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I took myvow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took it, or underwhatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in heaven. 

It cannot be for nothing, dear, that our blessed Lord made that sternCommandment. The Church may have given a wrong interpretation to it--yousay 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 allthe 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 thisunyielding stay, when He issued his divine and irrevocable law thatnever under any circumstances should marriage be broken. 

Oh, I am sure of it, dear, quite sure, and before His unsearchablewisdom 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 Churchwhich lasts as long as life does not go on one moment longer. Theinstant death sets my body free, my soul may fly to where it belongs. IfI were going to live ten, twenty, thirty years, this might be coldcomfort, but I am not. 

Then why should we be sorry? You cannot be mine in this life and Icannot 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 ispassed our union will begin! And once it begins it will never end! SoDeath 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 weshall be together through all Eternity! How wonderful! How glorious! Howtriumphant!

Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe that inthe 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 shalllive with my dear ones who are still on earth. That is why I am willingto go--because I am sure that the moment I draw my last breath I shallbe standing by your side. 

So don't let there be any weeping for me, dear. "Nothing is here fortears; 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--ifthings had been otherwise with both of us. I should like to live to seeyour 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'ssomething, isn't it?); and I should like to live a little longer foranother reason, a woman's reason--simply to be loved, and to be toldthat I am loved, for though a woman may know that, she likes to hear itsaid and is never tired of hearing it. 

But things have gone against us, and it is almost sinfully ungrateful toregret anything when we have so many reasons for thankfulness. 

And then about Girlie--I used to think it would be terrible (for me, Imean) to die before she could be old enough to have any clear memory ofher 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 ofthose whose parents passed away while they were children. But I am notafraid of that now, because I know that in the future, when our littlegirl asks about her mother, you will describe me to her as _you_ saw andremember me--and that will be _so_ much sweeter and lovelier than I everwas, and it will be _such_ a joy to think that my daughter sees methrough her father's eyes. 

Besides, dearest, there is something still more thrilling--the thoughtthat Girlie may grow to be like me (like what you _think_ me), and thatin 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 someday, perhaps, years and years hence, when she is quite grown up, she maytouch your arm and you may turn quickly to look at her, and lo! it willseem to you as if Mary herself (_your_ Mary) were by your side. OhDeath, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?

Go on with your great work, dearest. Don't let it flag from any coldfeeling that I am lost to you. Whenever you think of me, say toyourself, "Mary is here; Love is stronger than death, many waters cannotquench it. "

Did you ever read Browning? I have been doing so during the last fewdays, nurse (she is quite a thoughtful woman) having lent me his lastvolume. When I read the last lines of what is said to have been his lastpoem I thought of you, dear:

 "_No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 'Strive and thrive!' Cry 'Speed, --fight on, fare ever There as here!'_"

I am going to get up again to-day, dear, having something to do that isjust a little important--to give you this manuscript book, in which Ihave been writing every day (or rather every night since you found me inLondon. )

You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no more onthat 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 onedoes that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other soulsthere, 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 andfoolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to show whata woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever, she is denied theright God gave her of choosing the best for herself and her children. 

There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring theslumber 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 thrilledme most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you passed in theAntarctic Ocean--five hundred feet above the surface of the sea andtherefore five hundred below it, going steadily on and on, against allthe force of tempestuous wind and wave, by power of the currentunderneath. 

Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that, dearest? Soperhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie than it has been forme. And in any case, I shall always feel that, after all and in spite ofeverything, it has been glorious to be a woman. 

 * * * * *

And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for a littlewhile, I want to write what I should like to say when I part from youto-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 lovedanybody but you, and that no marriage vows will keep me from loving youto the last. 

I want to thank you for the great, great love you have given me inreturn--all the way back from the time when I was a child. Oh, mydearest, may God for ever bless you for the sunshine you have broughtinto 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. Andwhen I have not had happiness I have had something far higher andbetter--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 songsof the birds, and then (apart from the divine love that is too holy tospeak about) in my religion, in my beloved Church, in the love of mydear 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, andif it has not been for long in this life, it will be for ever in thenext. 

So good-bye, my dearest me--_just for a little moment_! My dearest one, Good-bye!

MARY O'NEILL. 

MARY O'NEILL'S LAST NOTE WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAVES OF HER MISSAL

AUGUST 9-10. 

It is all over. I have given him my book. My secret is out. He knowsnow. I almost think he has known all along. 

I had dressed even more carefully than usual, with nurse's Irish laceabout my neck as a collar, and my black hair brushed smooth in mymother's manner, and when I went downstairs by help of my usual kindcrutch (it is wonderful how strong I have been to-day) everybody saidhow much better I was looking. 

Martin was there, and he took me into the garden. It was a little latein the afternoon, but such a sweet and holy time, with its clear air andquiet 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 wetalked on the usual subjects--the High Bailiff, the special license, "the boys" of the _Scotia_ who were coming over for my wedding, and howsome 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, andI felt entirely happy--sitting there in my cushions, with my white handin his brown one, looking into his clear eyes and ruddy face or up tothe broad blue of the sky. 

The red sun had begun to sink down behind the dark bar of St. Mary'sRock, and the daisies in the garden to close their eyes and drop theirheads 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 wecould hear Christian Ann upstairs putting baby into her darling whitecot--she sleeps with grandma now. 

The time came for me to go up also, and then I gave him my book, which Ihad been carrying under my arm, telling him to read the last pagesfirst. 

Although we had never spoken of my book before he seemed to know allabout it; and it flashed upon me at that moment that, while I thought Ihad been playing a game of make-believe with him, he had been playing agame 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, holdingeach other's hands. I was dreadfully afraid he was going to break downas he did at Castle Raa, and once again I had that thrilling, swellingfeeling (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 armsabout me, and kissed me on the lips, and said, _silently_ but oh, soeloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God bless you!"

Then I walked upstairs alone, quite alone, and when I reached the top hewas still at the bottom looking up at me. I smiled down to him, thenwalked firmly into my room and up to my bed, and then . . . Down, allmy strength gone in a moment. 

 * * * * *

I have had such a wonderful experience during the night. It was like adream, and yet something more than a dream. I don't want to make toomuch of it--to say that it was a vision or any supernaturalmanifestation such as the blessed Margaret Mary speaks about. Perhaps itwas only the result of memory operating on my past life, my thoughts anddesires. But perhaps it was something higher and more spiritual, andGod, for my comforting, has permitted me to look for one moment behindthe veil. 

I thought it was to-morrow--my wedding day, and the day of Father Dan'sthanksgiving celebration--and I was sitting by my French window (whichwas wide open) to look at the procession. 

I seemed to see everything--Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen intheir clean "ganzies, " the village people in their Sunday clothes, theRechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their colouredbadges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the motherswith babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge. 

I thought the procession passed under my window and went on to thechurch, which was soon crowded, leaving numbers of people to kneel onthe path in front, as far down as the crumbling gate piers which leantowards each other, their foundations having given way. 

Then I thought Benediction began, and when the congregation sang I sangalso. I heard myself singing:

 "_Mater purissima, Ora pro nobis_. "

Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the ReverendMother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her deep rich voiceunder mine:

 "_Mater castissima Ora pro nobis_. "

Then I thought the _Ora_ ended, and in the silence that followed it Iheard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel path below. I hadclosed my eyes, yet I seemed to see them, for I felt as if I were undersome strange sweet anæsthetic which had taken away all pain but not allconsciousness. 

Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift baby upto me, and say something about her. 

I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then there wasdarkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody sobbing andFather 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 afterall 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 theaurora, and then . . . I was on a broad white snowy plateau, and Martinwas 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 forhis sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his comrades abouthim he will control himself and be strong. 

 * * * * *

Such a peaceful morning! There is just light enough to see St. Mary'sRock. It is like a wavering ghost moving in the vapour on the face ofthe deep. I can hear the far-off murmur of the sea. It is like thehumming in a big shell. A bird is singing in the garden and the swallowsare twittering in a nest under the thatch. A mist is lying over themeadows, and the tree tops seem to be floating between the earth and thesky. 

How beautiful the world is!

Very soon the mist will rise, and the day will break and the sun willcome again and . . . There will be no more night. 

[END OF THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL]

MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD

My darling was right. I had known all along, but I had been hopingagainst hope--that the voyage would set her up, and the air of theAntarctic cure her. 

Then her cheerfulness never failed her, and when she looked at me withher joyous eyes, and when her soft hand slipped into mine I forgot allmy fears, so the blow fell on me as suddenly as if I had never expectedit. 

With a faint pathetic smile she gave me her book and I went back to myroom at the inn and read it. I read all night and far into the nextday--all her dear story, straight from her heart, written out in hersmall delicate, beautiful characters, with scarcely an erasure. 

No use saying what I thought or went through. So many things I had neverknown before! Such love as I had never even dreamt of, and could neverrepay her for now!

How my whole soul rebelled against the fate that had befallen my dearone! If I have since come to share, however reluctantly, her sweetresignation, to bow my head stubbornly where she bowed hers so meekly(before the Divine Commandment), and to see that marriage, truemarriage, is the rock on which God builds His world, it was not thenthat I thought anything about that. 

I only thought with bitter hatred of the accursed hypocrisies ofcivilised society which, in the names of Law and Religion, had beencrushing the life out of the sweetest and purest woman on earth, merelybecause she wished to be "mistress of herself and sovereign of hersoul. "

What did I care about the future of the world? Or the movement of divinetruths? Or the new relations of man and woman in the good time that wasto come? Or the tremendous problems of lost and straying womanhood, orthe sufferings of neglected children, or the tragedies of the wholegirlhood of the world? What did I care about anything but my poormartyred darling? The woman God gave me was mine and I could not giveher up--not now, after all she had gone through. 

Sometime in the afternoon (heaven knows when) I went back to SunnyLodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the hearth-rug. Mymother was silent and trying not to let me see her swollen eyes. My dearone was sleeping, had been sleeping all day long, the sleep of an angel. Strange and frightening fact, nobody being able to remember that she hadever been seen to sleep before!

After a while, sick and cold at heart, I went down to the shore where wehad 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, whichstood out against the reddening sky, stern, grand, gloomy. 

Old Tommy the Mate came to the door of his cabin. I went into the quietsmoky place with its earthen floor and sat in a dull torpor by thehearth, under the sooty "laff" and rafters. The old man did not say aword to me. He put some turf on the fire and then sat on a three-leggedstool at the other side of the hearth-place. 

Once he got up and gave me a basin of buttermilk, then stirred the peatsand sat down again without speaking. Towards evening, when the risingsea was growing louder, I got up to go. The old man followed me to thedoor, and there, laying his hand on my arm he said:

"She's been beating to windward all her life, boy. But mind yethis--_she's fetching the harbour all right at last_. "

Going up the road I heard a band of music in the distance, and saw aprocession of people coming down. It was Father Dan's celebration ofthanksgiving to God for what was left of Daniel O'Neill's ill-gottenwealth sent back from Rome for the poor. 

Being in no humour to thank God for anything, I got over a sod hedge andcrossed a field until I came to a back gate to our garden, near to"William Rufus's" burial place--stone overgrown with moss, inscriptionalmost obliterated. 

On the path I met my mother, with baby, toddling and tumbling by herside. 

"How is she now?" I asked. 

She was awake--had been awake these two hours, but in a strange kind ofwakefulness, her big angel eyes open and shining like stars as ifsmiling at someone whom nobody else could see, and her lips moving as ifspeaking some words which nobody else could hear. 

"What art thou saying, _boght millish_?" my mother had asked, and aftera moment in which she seemed to listen in rapture, my darling hadanswered:

"Hush! I am speaking to mamma--telling her I am leaving Isabel withChristian Ann. And she is saying she is very glad. "

We walked round to the front of the house until we came close under thewindow of "Mary O'Neill's little room, " which was wide open. 

The evening was so still that we could hear the congregation singing inthe church and on the path in front of it. 

Presently somebody began to sing in the room above. It was mydarling--in her clear sweet silvery voice which I have never heard thelike of in this world and never shall again. 

After a moment another voice joined hers--a deep voice, the ReverendMother's. 

All else was quiet. Not a sound on earth or in the air. A hush hadfallen on the sea itself, which seemed to be listening for my preciousdarling'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'sarms--"Bo-loo-la-la-ma-ma. " I took her and held her up to the openwindow, crying:

"Look, darling! Here's Girlie!"

There was no answer, but after another moment the Reverend Mother cameto the window. Her pale face was even paler than usual, and her lipstrembled. 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. "

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

I saw him off at Tilbury when he left England on his last Expedition. Already he was his own man once more. After the blinding, stunningeffect of the great event there had been a quick recuperation. Hisspirit had risen to a wonderful strength and even a certaincheerfulness. 

I did not find it hard to read the secret of this change. It was notmerely 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 MaryO'Neill's beautiful belief (the old, old belief) in the immortality ofpersonal love, and was firmly convinced that, freed from theimprisonment of the flesh, she was with him every day and hour, and thatas long as he lived she always would be. 

There was nothing vague, nothing fantastic, nothing mawkish, nothingunmanly about this belief, but only the simple faith of a steady souland a perfectly clear brain. It was good to see how it braced a strongman for life to face Death in that way. 

As for his work I found him quite hopeful. His mission apart, I thoughthe was looking forward to his third trip to the Antarctic, inexpectation of the silence and solitude of that strengthening region. 

As I watched the big liner that was taking him away disappear down theThames I had no more doubt that he would get down to the South Pole, andfinish his task there, than that the sun would rise the followingmorning. 

Whatever happens this time he will "march breast forward. "

MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR

WIRELESS--ANTARCTIC CONTINENT (_via_ MACQUARIE ISLAND AND RADIO HOBART16). 

Arrived safe. All well. Weather excellent. Blue sky. Warm. Not a breathof 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 wasright. She is here. "Love is stronger than death, many waters cannotquench it. "

THE END