Chapter I: Fall in Love (5)

"Don't worry about what I was saying last night. I was mad to think what might happen to you while I should be down there, but I've been thinking it over since and I've come to the conclusion that if their is anything to God He can be trusted to look after you without any help from me, so when we meet again before I go away we'll never say another word on the subject--that's a promice.

"I can't go until your better though, so I'm just sending the jaunting car into town with a telegram to London telling them to postpone the expedision on account of illness, and if they think it's mine it won't matter because it's something worse.

"But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you might come to the window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be as happy as a sand-boy.

"Yours,

"Mart."_

To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an immediate verbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and hoped to be up to dinner, so he must not send that telegram to London on any account, seeing that nobody knew what was going to happen and everything was in the 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 Mate at the other end of the lawn.

I don't know why I took so much pains with my dress that night. I did not expect to see Martin again. I was sending him away from me. Yet never before had I dressed myself with so much care. I put on the soft white satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a string of pearls over my hair, and another (a tight one) about my neck.

Martin was waiting for me in the boudoir, and to my surprise he had dressed too, but, except that he wore a soft silk shirt, I did not know what he was wearing, or whether he looked handsome or not, because it was 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 in white satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his eyes fluttering as he looked at me, and said something sweet about a silvery fir tree with 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 last evening 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 at the sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet lightning with low rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for a moment with visions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by the grim and greedy darkness.

During dinner we kept faith with each other. In order to avoid the one subject that was uppermost in both our minds, we played at being children, 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 thought so heroic and I so tragic, we dropped into the vernacular, and I called him "boy" and he called me "bogh millish," and at every racy word that came up from the forgotten cells of our brains we shrieked with laughter.

When Martin spoke of his skipper I asked "Is he a stunner?" When he mentioned one of his scientific experts I inquired "Is he any good?" And after he had told me that he hoped to take possession of some island in the 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 he was laughing. I had some delicious moments of femininity too (such as no woman can resist), until it struck me suddenly that in all this make-believe we were making love to each other again. That frightened me for a time, but I told myself that everything was safe as long as we could carry on the game.

It was not always easy to do so, though, for some of our laughter had tears behind it, and some of our memories had an unexpected sting, because things had a meaning for us now which they never had before, and we 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 tide threatening to submerge us, and I nearly choked when I repeated my last despairing 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 to break up under our feet.

To escape from it I sat down at the piano and began to sing. I dared not sing the music I loved best--the solemn music of the convent--so I sang some of the nonsense songs I had heard in the streets. At one moment I twisted round on the piano stool and said:

"I'll bet you anything"--(I always caught Martin's tone in Martin's company), "you can't remember the song I sang sitting in the boat with William 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 then I 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 it seemed to pierce through us, so Martin proposed that we should try the rollicking chorus which the excursionists had sung on the pleasure-steamer the night before.

He did not know a note of music and he had no more voice than a corn-crake, but crushing up on to the music-stool by my side, he banged away with his left hand while I played with my right, and we sang together 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 up much longer, and every now and then I forgot that I was in my boudoir and seemed to see that lonesome plateau, twelve thousand feet above the icy barrier that guards the Pole, and Martin toiling through blizzards over rolling waves of snow.

Towards midnight we went out on to the balcony to look at the lightning for the last time. The thunder was shaking the cliffs and rolling along them 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 in the morning, before I was out of bed, having something to do in Blackwater, where "the boys were getting up a spree of some sort."

In this way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking himself down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came at last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for the whirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.

My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at him. Our eyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own was hot and trembling.

"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. "I shall always remember it."

I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about that would 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 to fame 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 he and 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 myself in countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility of renunciation--each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful thoughts and 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 I should 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 my throat 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't know 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 hard with my voice, I tried to tell him he must not despair.

"You are so young," I said. "Surely the future holds much happiness for you."

And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman taking the love I was turning away would have made the world a blank for me, I actually said something about the purest joys of love falling to his lot some 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 you were dead."

There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of secret joy in it too.

He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long time. In spite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand go. I felt as if 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 handkerchief which 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, were trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as it had been the night before.

There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing but the 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 my heart could warm itself.

Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost all control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mighty surging river.

Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped me tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in a quivering, husky voice:

"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you because you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We love each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you are, 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 a roaring 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 possession of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. I wanted 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 gone out with him.

The room seemed to become dark.

SIXTY-NINTH CHAPTER

For a moment I stood where Martin had left me, throbbing through and through like an open wound, telling myself that he had gone, that I should never see him again, and that I had driven him away from me.

Those passionate kisses had deprived me of the power of consecutive thought. I could only feel. And the one thing I felt above everything else was that the remedy I had proposed to myself for my unhappy situation--renunciation--was impossible, because Martin was a part of my own 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 might do under the power of them, I hurried into my bedroom and locked and bolted the door.

But the heart knows nothing of locks and bolts, and a moment afterwards my spirit was following Martin to his room. I was seeing him as I had seen him last, with his face full of despair, and I was accusing myself of the pain I had caused him.

I had conquered Martin, but I had conquered myself also. I had compelled him to submit, but his submission had vanquished me.

Even if I had a right to impose renunciation on myself, what right had I to impose it upon him, who did not desire it, did not think it necessary, was not reconciled to it, and only accepted it out of obedience to my will?

He loved me. No man ever loved a woman more dearly. He deserved to be loved in return. He had done nothing to forfeit love. He was bound by no ties. 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 abominable selfishness. In his great love he had said little or nothing about himself. But why had _I_ not thought of him? In the struggles of my religious conscience I had been thinking of myself alone, but Martin had been 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 to undress, for I stopped every moment to think.

I thought of the long years Martin had been waiting for me and while I was telling myself that he had kept pure for my sake, my heart was beating 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 other woman 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 I breathed, and when I remembered what he had said about wearing the willow for me as if I were dead I was almost distracted.

His despairing words kept ringing mercilessly in my ears--"It's all as one now"; "How happy we might have been." I wanted to go to him and tell him 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 too late to carry out my purpose. The opportunity had passed. Martin had gone to his room. He might even be in bed by this time.

But there are spiritual influences which control our bodies independently of our will. I put on my dressing-gown (being partly undressed) and went back to the boudoir. I hardly knew what impulse impelled me to do so, and neither do I know why I went from the boudoir to the balcony unless it was in hope of the melancholy joy of standing once 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, but I hardly heard it. The white sheet lightning was still pulsing in the sky 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 its brown lugger sails, heading towards Blackwater; at the next moment my eyes were dazzled as by a flashlight from some unseen battleship.

Leaning over the balcony and gazing into the intermittent darkness I pictured to myself the barren desolation of Martin's life after he had left me. Loving me so much he might fall into some excess, perhaps some vice, and if that happened what would be the measure of my responsibility?

Losing me he might lose his faith in God. I had read of men becoming spiritual castaways after they had lost their anchorage in some great love, 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 by sacrificing my own I was overwhelmed by a love so great that I thought I could 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 I went back to the boudoir, and sat down.

I looked at my cuckoo clock. It was half-past twelve. Only half an hour since Martin had left me! It seemed like hours and hours. What of the years 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 dead laughter. The ghost of our happiness seemed to haunt it. I was sure I could never live in it again.

I wondered what Martin would be doing now. Would he be in bed and asleep, or sitting up like this, and thinking of me as I was thinking of him?

At one moment I thought I heard his footsteps. I listened, but the sound stopped. At another moment, covering my face with my hands, I thought I saw 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 at me 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 that if 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 body and soul were torn asunder I must go.

Before I knew what I was doing I had opened the door and was walking across the corridor in the direction of Martin's room.

The house was dark. Everybody had gone to bed. Light as my footsteps were, the landing was creaking under me. I knew that the floors of the grim old Castle sometimes made noises when nobody walked on them, but none the less I felt afraid.

Half way to Martin's door I stopped. A ghostly hand seemed to be laid on my shoulder and a ghostly voice seemed to say in my ear:

"Wait! Reflect! If you do what you are thinking of doing what will happen? You will become an outcast. The whole body of your own sex will turn against you. You will be a bad woman."

I knew what it was. It was my conscience speaking to me in the voice of my Church--my Church, the mighty, irresistible power that was separating me from Martin. I was its child, born in its bosom, but if I broke its laws it would roll over me like a relentless Juggernaut.

It was not at first that I could understand why the Church should set itself up against my Womanhood. My Womanhood was crying out for life and love 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 I saw things more plainly. The Church was the soul of the world. It stood for purity, which alone could hold the human family together. If all women who had made unhappy marriages were to do as I was thinking of doing (no matter under what temptation) the world would fall to wreck and ruin.

Feeling crushed and ashamed, and oh, so little and weak, I groped my way back to the boudoir and closed the door.

Then a strange thing happened--one of those little accidents of life which seem to be thrown off by the mighty hand of Fate. A shaft of light from my bedroom, crossing the end of my writing-desk, showed me a copy of a little insular newspaper.

The paper, which must have come by the evening post, had probably been opened by Martin, and for that reason only I took it up and glanced at it.

The first thing that caught my eye was a short report headed "Charity Performance."

It ran:

_"The English ladies and gentlemen from Castle Raa who are cruising round the island in the handsome steam yacht, the_ Cleopatra, _gave a variety entertainment last night in aid of the Catholic Mission at the Palace, Ravenstown.

"At the end of the performance the Lord Bishop, who was present in person and watched every item of the programme with obvious enjoyment, proposed a vote of thanks in his usual felicitous terms, thanking Lord Raa for this further proof of his great liberality of mind in helping a Catholic charity, and particularly mentioning the beautiful and accomplished Madame Lier, who had charmed all eyes and won all hearts by her serpentine dances, and to whom the Church in Ellan would always be indebted for the handsome sum which had been the result of her disinterested efforts in promoting the entertainment.

"It is understood that the_ Cleopatra _will leave Ravenstown Harbour to-morrow morning on her way back to Port Raa."_

That was the end of everything. It came upon me like a torrent and swept all my scruples away.

Such was the purity of the Church--threatening _me_ with its censures for wishing to follow the purest dictates of my heart, yet taking money from a woman like Alma, who was bribing it to be blind to her misconduct and to cover her with its good-will!

My husband too--his infidelities were flagrant and notorious, yet the Church, through its minister, was flattering his vanity and condoning his offences!

He was coming back to me, too--this adulterous husband, and when he came the Church would require that I should keep "true faith" with him, whatever his conduct, and deny myself the pure love that was now awake within me.

But no, no, no! Never again! It would be a living death. Accursed be the power that could doom a woman to a living death!

Perhaps I was no longer sane--morally sane--and if so God and the Church will forgive me. But seeing that neither the Church nor the Law could liberate me from this bond which I did not make, that both were shielding the evil man and tolerating the bad woman, my whole soul rose in revolt.

I told myself now that to leave my husband and go to Martin would be to escape from shame to honour.

I saw Martin's despairing face again as I had seen it at the moment of our parting, and my brain rang with his passionate words. "You are my wife. I am your real husband. We love each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you are, or what they do with you, you are 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. This will be your true marriage. The other was only legalised and sanctified prostitution."

I leapt up, and tearing the door open, I walked with strong steps across the corridor towards Martin's room.

My hair was down, my arms were bare in the ample sleeves of my dressing-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 who had a right. It turned of itself and the door opened.

My mind was in a whirl, black rings were circling round my eyes, but I heard my trembling, quivering, throbbing voice, as if it had been the voice of somebody else, saying:

"Martin, I am coming in."

Then my heart which had been beating violently seemed to stop. My limbs gave way. I was about to fall.

At the next moment strong arms were around me. I had no fear. But there was 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