Chapter I: Become a Mother (1)

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 could do to persuade him. Perhaps it is one of the mysteries which God alone can read that our positions seemed to have been reversed since the day before.

He was confused, agitated, and full of self reproaches, while I felt no fear and no remorse, but only an indescribable joy, as if a new and gracious 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 expedition as 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 else must go by the board."

"Nothing shall go by the board for my sake, Martin. I refuse and forbid it."

Everything had been arranged, everything settled, great sums of money had been subscribed out of faith in him, and him only, and a large company was ready and waiting to sail under his command. He was the Man of 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 with me 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 was with him. If I did what he desired it would reflect dishonour on his name, 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 it is to be?"

"Then God will provide for it," I said, and with that last answer he had to be satisfied.

"You must take a letter from me at all events," said Martin, and sitting at my desk he began to write one.

It is amazing to me now when I come to think of it that I could have been so confident of myself and so indifferent to consequences. But I was thinking of one thing only--that Martin must go on his great errand, finish his great work and win his great reward, without making any sacrifice 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 it of 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 did not 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 eyes of 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, and after that there was a moment of heavenly silence.

It was now half-past eight--the hour when the motor-car had been ordered round to take him to the town--and though I felt as if I could shed drops of my blood to keep back the finger of my cuckoo clock I pointed it 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 arms about 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 we stood in silence for a moment while my bosom heaved and his breath came quick.

Then he took my right hand in both of his hands and said: "There is a bond 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. My throat grew thick, and for a moment I could not speak. But then I heard myself say:

"Love is stronger than death; many waters cannot quench it."

His hands quivered, his whole body trembled, and I thought he was going to clasp me to his breast as before, but he only drew down my forehead with his hot hand and kissed it.

That was all, but a blinding mist seemed to pass before my eyes, and when 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 out at the porch.

I heard the metallic clashing of the door of the automobile--he was already in the car.

I heard the throb of the motor and ruckling of the gravel of the path--he was moving away.

I heard the dying down of the engine and the soft roll of the rubber wheels--I was alone.

For some moments after that the world seemed empty and void. But the feeling passed, and when I recovered my strength I found Martin's letter in my moist left hand.

Then I knelt before the fire, and putting the letter into the flames I burnt it.

SEVENTY-FIRST CHAPTER

Within, two hours of Martin's departure I had regained complete possession of myself and was feeling more happy than I had ever felt before.

The tormenting compunctions of the past months were gone. It was just as if I had obeyed some higher law of my being and had become a freer and purer woman.

My heart leapt within me and to give free rein to the riot of my joy I put on my hat and cloak to go into the glen.

Crossing the garden I came upon Tommy the Mate, who told me there had been 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 their dirty ould drains, I'm thinkin'."

Then he spoke of Martin, whom he had seen off, saying he would surely come back.

"'Deed he will though. A boy like yander wasn't born to lave his bark in the 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 nature seemed to ring with music--the rustling of the leaves overhead, the ticking of the insects underfoot, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing of the cattle, the light chanting of the stream, the deep organ-song of the sea, and then the swelling and soaring Gloria in my own bosom, which shot 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 where Martin and I had walked together I wanted--silly as it sounds to say so--to go down on my knees and kiss the very turf which his feet had trod.

I took lunch in the boudoir as before, but I did not feel as if I were alone, for I had only to close my eyes and Martin, from the other side of the table, seemed to be looking across at me. And neither did I feel that the room was full of dead laughter, for our living voices seemed to be ringing in it still.

After tea I read again my only love-letter, revelling in the dear delightful 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 of Blackwater," and their intention of "getting up a spree."

This suggested that perhaps Martin had not yet left the island but was remaining for the evening steamer, in order to be present at some sort of 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 a sheltered and hidden part of the pier, almost opposite the outgoing steamer.

Shall I ever forget the scene that followed?

First, came a band of music playing one of our native songs, which was about a lamb that had been lost in the snow, and how the Big Man of the Farm went out in search of it, and found it and brought it home in his arms.

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 of him, 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 in knitted woollen caps (such as men wear in frozen regions) over their heads and down the sides of their comely faces.

I was crying like a child at the sight of it all, but none the less I was supremely happy.

When the procession reached the gangway Martin disappeared into the steamer, and then the bandsmen ranged themselves in front of it, and struck 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 the refrain.

That brought Martin on to the captain's bridge, where he stood bareheaded, struggling to smile.

By this time the last of the ship's bells had rung, the funnels were belching, and the captain's voice was calling on the piermen to clear away.

At last the hawsers were thrown off and the steamer started, but, with Martin still standing bareheaded on the bridge, the people rushed to the end of the pier to see the last of him.

There they sang again, louder than ever, the girls' clear voices above all 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 watched the steamer until she slid behind the headland of the bay, round, the revolving light that stands on the point of it--stretching my neck through the window of the car, while the fresh wind from the sea smote my hot face and the salt air licked my parched lips. And then I fell back in my seat and cried for sheer joy of the love that was shown to Martin.

The crowd was returning down the pier by this time, like a black river running in the darkness and rumbling over rugged stones, and I heard their 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 was saying:

"Home, my lady?"

"Home," I answered.

Seeing Martin off had been too much like watching the lifeboat on a dark and stormy night, when the lights dip behind a monstrous wave and for some breathless moments you fear they will never rise.

But as we drove up the head I caught the lights of the steamer again now far out at sea, and well I knew that as surely as my Martin was there he was thinking of me and looking back towards the house in which he had left me behind him.

When we reached the Castle I found to my surprise that every window was ablaze.

The thrum of the automobile brought Price into the hall. She told me that the yachting party had come back, and were now in their bedrooms dressing for dinner.

As I went upstairs to my own apartments I heard trills of laughter from behind several of the closed doors, mingled with the muffled humming of various music-hall ditties.

And then suddenly a new spirit seemed to take possession of me, and I knew that I had become another woman.

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater I continued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the lighted windows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the question which for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day and night--Why had I left her behind me?

In spite of all her importunities, all her sweet unselfish thought of my own aims and interests, all her confidence in herself, all her brave determination to share responsibility for whatever the future might have in 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 man who, notwithstanding his infidelities and brutalities, had a right in the eyes of the law, the church, and the world to call her his wife and to treat her accordingly?

Let me make no pretence of a penitence I did not feel. Never for one moment did I reproach myself for what had happened. Never for the shadow of a moment did I reproach her. She had given herself to me of her queenly right and sovereign grace as every good woman in the world must give 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 of Nature--the cruel and at the same time the glorious law of Nature--that the 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 out of her stainless heart that everything has worked out for the best, and suffering is God's salt for keeping our souls alive, when I think of what she went through for me, while I was out of all reach and sight, I know I shall never forgive myself for leaving her behind--never, never never.

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's guests, I wish to repeat that I am trying to describe them without malice exactly as they were--selfish, cruel, ill-mannered, and insincere.

The dinner-bell rang while I was dressing, and on going downstairs a few minutes afterwards I found that there had been no attempt to wait for me.

Already the whole party were assembled at the table, my husband being at the foot of it, and Alma (incredible as it may seem) in the place of the hostess at the head.

This in my altered mood, was more than I could bear, so, while the company made some attempt to welcome me with rather crude salutations, and old Mrs. Lier cried, "Come along here, my pore dear, and tell me how you've gotten on while we've been away" (indicating an empty seat by her side), I walked boldly up to Alma, put my hand on the back of her chair and said, "If you please."

Alma looked surprised. But after a moment she carried off the difficult situation by taking the seat which had been reserved for me beside her mother, by congratulating me on my improved appearance and herself on relief from the necessity of filling my place and discharging my responsible duties.

My husband, with the rest of the company, had looked up at the awkward incident, and I thought I saw by his curious grimace that he supposed my father (of whom he was always in fear) had told me to assert myself. But Alma, with surer instinct, was clearly thinking of Martin, and almost immediately she began to speak of him.

"So your great friend has just gone, dearest. The servants are crazy about him. We've missed him again, you see. Too bad! I hope you gave him our 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 eats the cushag"--a bitter weed that grows in barren places.

Alma joined in the general laughter which followed this rather intemperate reply, and then led off the conversation On the incidents of the cruise.

I gathered that, encouraged by her success in capturing the Bishop by her entertainment, she had set herself to capture the "aristocracy" of our island by inviting them to a dance on the yacht, while it lay at anchor off Holmtown, and the humour of the moment was to play battledore and shuttlecock with the grotesque efforts of our great people (the same that had figured at my wedding) to grovel before my husband and his guests.

"I say, Jimmy," cried Mr. Vivian in his shrill treble, "do you remember the old gal in the gauze who--etc . . . ?"

"But do you remember," cried Mr. Eastcliff, "the High Bailiff or Bum Bailiff 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 before I became aware that it was being improvised for my benefit.

After Alma had admitted that the Bishop was a "great flirt" of hers, and Mr. Vivian, amid shouts of laughter, had christened him her "crush," she turned to me and said, with her smiling face slightly drawn down on one side:

"Mary, my love, you will certainly agree that your islanders who do not eat 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 men turned the talk to their usual topic, horses and dogs, and I heard a great deal about "laying on the hounds," which culminated in a rather vulgar 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 if old Mrs. Lier, addressing herself to me, had not struck a serious subject.

It was about Alma's dog, which was dead. The poor wheezy, spaniel had died in the course of the cruise, though what the cause of its death was nobody knew, unless it had been fretting for its mistress during the period of quarantine which the absurd regulations of government had required 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's carpenter had made a coffin for it--a beautiful one of mahogany with a plate-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 a kind of state in Alma's dressing-room. But to-morrow it was to be buried in the grounds, probably in the glen, to which the company, all dressed in black, were to follow in procession as at a human funeral.

I was choking with anger and horror at the recital of these incredible arrangements, 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 when the conversation was resumed my quick ears (which have not always added to 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 arm round my waist, called me her "dear little nun," and carried me off to the hall.

There we sat about the big open fire, and after a while the talk became as 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 (the same who "adored the men who went to the deuce for a woman") repeated the terms of an advertisement she had seen in a Church newspaper: "A parlour-maid wants a situation in a family where a footman is kept."

The laughter which followed this story was loud enough, but it was redoubled 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" in that, and "the pore girl hadn't no such thought as they had."

Again I was choking with indignation, and in order to assert myself once for all I said:

"Ladies, I will ask you to discontinue this kind of conversation. I don't like it."

At last the climax came.

About ten days after Martin left me I received a telegram, which had been put ashore at Southampton, saying, "Good-bye! God bless you!" and next day there came a newspaper containing an account of his last night at Tilbury.

He had given a dinner to a number of his friends, including his old commander and his wife, several other explorers who happened to be in London, a Cabinet Minister, and the proprietor of the journal which had promoted his expedition.

They had dined in the saloon of the "Scotia" (how vividly I remembered it!), 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 his sentimental little speeches (all heart and not too much grammar), in which he said that in starting out for another siege of the South Pole he "couldn't help thinking, with a bit of a pain under the third button of his double-breasted waistcoat, of the dear ones they were leaving behind, and of the unknown regions whither they were tending where dancing would be forgotten."

I need not say how this moved me, being where I was, in that uncongenial company; but by some mischance I left the paper which contained it on the table in the drawing-room, and on going downstairs after breakfast next morning I found Alma stretched out in a rocking-chair before the fire in the hail, smoking a cigarette and reading the report aloud in a mock heroic tone to a number of the men, including my husband, whose fat body (he was growing corpulent) was shaking with laughter.

It was as much as I could do to control an impulse to jump down and flare out at them, but, being lightly shod, I was standing quietly in their midst before they were aware of my presence.

"Ah," said Alma, with the sweetest and most insincere of her smiles, "we were just enjoying the beautiful account of your friend's last night in England."

"So I see," I said, and, boiling with anger underneath, I quietly took the 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 carried it to the fire and burnt it.

This seemed to be the end of all things. The tall Mr. Eastcliff went over 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 truth of Alma's excuse for the cruise on the ground of his visit to "his friend who had taken a shoot in Skye;" but now he found himself too deeply interested in the Inverness Meeting to remain longer, while the rest of the party became so absorbed in the Perth and Ayr races, salmon-fishing on the Tay, and stag-shooting in the deer-forests of Invercauld, that within a week thereafter I had said good-bye to all of them.

All save Alma.

I was returning from the hall after the departure of a group of my guests 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 old dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest steamers 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, with equal weakness and indiscretion, but less than equal danger. A word, half a word, and almost before it was spoken, Alma's arms were about my neck and she was calling me her "dearest, sweetest, kindest friend in the world."

My maid Price was present at this interview, and hardly had Alma left the 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 watching you."

SEVENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

My husband was the next to go.

He made excuse of his Parliamentary duties. He might be three or four weeks away, but meantime Alma would be with me, and in any case I was not the sort of person to feel lonely.

Never having heard before of any devotion to his duty as a peer, I asked if that was all that was taking him to London.

"Perhaps not all," he answered, and then, with a twang of voice and a twitch of feature, he said:

"I'm getting sick of this God-forsaken place, and then . . . to tell you the truth, your own behaviour is beginning to raw me."

With my husband's departure my triumphal course seemed to come to a close. Left alone with Alma, I became as weak and irresolute as before and began to brood upon Price's warning.

My maid had found a fierce delight in my efforts to assert myself as mistress in my husband's house, but now (taking her former advantage) she was for ever harping upon my foolishness in allowing Alma to remain in it.

"She's deceiving you, my lady," said Price. "_Her_ waiting for a steamer indeed! Not a bit of her. If your ladyship will not fly out at me again and pack me off bag and baggage, I'll tell you what's she's waiting for."

"What?"

"She's waiting for . . . she thinks . . . she fancies . . . well, to tell you the honest truth, my lady, the bad-minded thing suspects that something is going to happen to your ladyship, and she's just waiting for the chance of telling his lordship."

I began to feel ill. A dim, vague, uneasy presentiment of coming trouble took frequent possession of my mind.

I tried to suppress it. I struggled to strangle it as an ugly monster created by the nervous strain I had been going through, and for a time I succeeded in doing so. I had told Martin that nothing would happen during his absence, and I compelled myself to believe that nothing would or could.

Weeks passed; the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave place to a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly clouds; the land became soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed their bare black boughs; the withered leaves drifted along the roads before blustering winds that came up from the sea; the evenings grew long and the mornings dreary; but still Alma, with her mother, remained at Castle Raa.

I began to be afraid of her. Something of the half-hypnotic spell which she had exercised over me when I was a child asserted itself again, but now 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 her coal-black eyes looking across at me through her long sable-coloured eyelashes.

Her conversation was as sweet and suave as ever, but I found myself creeping away from her and even shrinking from her touch.

More than once I remembered what Martin in his blunt way had said of her: "I hate that woman; she's like a snake; I want to put my foot on it."

The feeling that I was alone in this great gaunt house with a woman who was waiting and watching to do me a mischief, that she might step into my shoes, was preying upon my health and spirits.

Sometimes I had sensations of faintness and exhaustion for which I could not account. Looking into my glass in the morning, I saw that my nose was 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 of her succulent voice she constantly offered me her sympathy. I always declined it, protesting that I was perfectly well, but none the less I shrank within myself and became more and more unhappy.

So fierce a strain could not last very long, and the climax came about three weeks after my husband had left for London.

I was rising from breakfast with Alma and her mother when I was suddenly seized with giddiness, and, after staggering for a moment, I fainted right away.

On recovering consciousness I found myself stretched out on the floor with Alma and her mother leaning over me.

Never to the last hour of my life shall I forget the look in Alma's eyes as I opened my own. With her upper lip sucked in and her lower one slightly set forward she was giving her mother a quick side-glance of evil triumph.

I was overwhelmed with confusion. I thought I might have been speaking as I was coming to, mentioning a name perhaps, out of that dim and sacred 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 to leave it loose over my bosom.

As soon as Alma saw that my eyes were open, she put her arm under my head 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 must send 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. But on 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 more without strengthening her suspicions, so I asked for Price, who helped me up to my room, where I sat on the edge of the bed while she gave me brandy and other restoratives.

That was the beginning of the end. I needed no doctor to say what had befallen me. It was something more stupendous for me than the removal of mountains or the stopping of the everlasting coming and going of the sea.

The greatest of the mysteries of womanhood, the most sacred, the most divine, the mighty mystery of a new life had come to me as it comes to other women. Yet how had it come? Like a lowering thunderstorm.

That golden hour of her sex, which ought to be the sweetest and most joyful in a woman's life--the hour when she goes with a proud and swelling heart to the one she loves, the one who loves her, and with her arms about his neck and her face hidden in his breast whispers her great new secret, and he clasps her more fondly than ever to his heart, because another and closer union has bound them together--that golden hour 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 been trampling on the conventions of morality, the canons of law, and even the sacraments of religion, thinking Nature, which had made our hearts what they are, did not mean a woman to be ashamed of her purest instincts!

And now Nature herself had risen up to condemn me, and before long the whole world would be joining in her cry.

If Martin had been there at that moment I do not think I should have cared what people might think or say of a woman in my condition. But he was separated from me by this time by thousands of miles of sea, and was going deeper and deeper every day into the dark Antarctic night.

How weak I felt, how little, how helpless! Never for a moment did I blame Martin. But I was alone with my responsibility, I was still living in 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 significant that he came in my father's big motor-car--a car of great speed and power.

I was in my dressing-gown before the fire in the boudoir, and at the first glance of his cheerful face under his iron-grey head I knew what Alma had said in the letter which had summoned him.

In his soft voice he asked me a few questions, and though I could have wished to conceal the truth I dared not. I noticed that his face brightened 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 ever by-and-by."

Then in his sweet and delicate way (as if he were saying something that would be very grateful) he told me what I knew already, and I listened with my head down and my face towards the fire.

He must have been disappointed at the sad way I received his news, for he proceeded to talk of my general health; saying the great thing in such a case as mine was to be cheerful, to keep a good heart, and to look hopefully to the future.

"You must have pleasant surroundings and the society of agreeable people--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 condition made his face very grave, and then his wife, Christian Ann, whose name caused 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 in the 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 came next.

"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 their troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and if she ever wants to rest her sweet head in a poor woman's bed, Mary O'Neill's little room is always waiting for her.'"

"God bless her!" I said--it was all I _could_ say--and then, to my great relief, he talked on other subjects.

The one thing I was afraid of was that he might speak of Martin. Heaven alone, which looks into the deep places of a woman's heart in her hour of sorest trial, knows why I was in such dread that he might do so, but sure I am that if he had mentioned Martin at that moment I should have screamed.

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 I her warmest and insincerest congratulations.

"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue. "Wasn't I right 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 to your 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 by congratulating herself on her perspicacity.

"I knew it," she said. "When I saw as how you were so and so, I said to Alma as I was sure you were that way. 'Impossible,' said Alma, but it's us married women to know, isn't it?"

After that, and some homely counsel out of her own experience--to take my breakfast in bed in future, avoiding tea, &c.,--she told me how fortunate 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 a happy heart, is Alma. So crazy about you too! You wouldn't believe it, but she's actually talking of staying with you until the December sailing, at all events."

The prospect of having Alma two months longer, to probe my secret soul as with a red-hot iron, seemed enough to destroy me, but my martyrdom had only begun.

Next day, Aunt Bridget came, and the bright glitter of the usually cold grey eyes behind her gold-rimmed spectacles told me at a glance that her visit was not an unselfish one.

"There now," she said, "you've got to thank me for this. Didn't I give you good advice when I told you to be a little blind? It's the only way with husbands. When Conrad came home with the news I said, 'Betsy, I must get away to the poor girl straight.' To be sure I had enough on my hands already, but I couldn't leave you to strangers, could I?"

Hearing no response to this question, Aunt Bridget went on to say that what 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 behave very well after our marriage, and times and times I was telling myself I had made a rue bargain; but when Betsy came I thought, 'I might have done better, but I might have done worse, and he's the father of my offspring, anyway.'"

Hearing no response to this either, Aunt Bridget went on to talk of Alma and her mother. Was not this the woman I suspected with my husband--the young one with the big eyes and "the quality toss with her?" Then why did I have a person like that about the house?

"If you need bright and cheerful company, what's amiss with your aunt and your first cousin? Some people are selfish, but I thank the saints I don't know what selfishness is. I'm willing to do for you what I did for your 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 say it might be a sacrifice, but then she wouldn't be sorry to leave the Big House either.

"I'm twenty years there, and now I'm to be a servant to my own stepchild. Dear heart knows if I can bear it much longer. The way that Nessy is carrying on with your father is something shocking. I do believe 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. He would 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 a great entertainment."

"Entertainment?"

"To celebrate the forthcoming event, of course, though nobody is to know that except ourselves, it seems. Just a house-warming in honour of your coming 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 you why if you'll promise not to whisper a word to any one. Your father is a sick man, my dear. Let him say what he likes when Conrad talks about cancer, he knows Death's hand is over him. And thinking it may fall before your time has come, he wants to take time by the forelock and see a sort of fulfilment of the hope of his life--and you know what that is."

It was terrible. The position in which I stood towards my father was now so tragic that (wicked as it was) I prayed with all my heart that I might never look upon his face again.

I was compelled to do so. Three days after Aunt Bridget's visit my father came to see me. The day was fine and I was walking on the lawn when his big car came rolling up the drive.

I was shocked to see the change in him. His face was ghastly white, his lips were blue, his massive and powerful head seemed to have sunk into his shoulders, and his limbs were so thin that his clothes seemed to hang on them; but the stern mouth was there still, and so was the masterful 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 without putting a sight on you."

After that, and some plain speech out of the primitive man he always was and will be (about it's being good for a woman to have children because it saved her from "losing her stomach" over imaginary grievances), he led me, with the same half-contemptuous tenderness which he used to show to my mother, back to the house and into the drawing-room.

Alma and her mother were there, the one writing at a desk, the other knitting on the sofa, and they rose as my father entered, but he waved them back to their places.

"Set down, ma'am. Take your seat, mother. I'm only here for a minute to talk to my gel about her great reception."

"Reception?" said Alma.

"Hasn't she told you about it?" he said, and being answered that I had not, he gave a rough outline of his project, whereupon Alma, whose former attitude towards my father had changed to one of flattery and subservience, lifted her hands and cried:

"How splendid! Such an inspiration! Only think, my love, you were to be kept bright and cheerful, and what could be better for that purpose?"

In the torment of my soul I urged one objection after another--it would be 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 an entertainment--but that was the worst of excuses, for Alma jumped in with an offer of assistance.

"My dearest child," she said, "you know how happy I shall be to help you. 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, and then, 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 a list of them."

"I will, sir."

"That'll do for the present--I guess I must be going now, or old Conrad will 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 of celebrating the forthcoming birth of an heir, my father had another and still more secret object--that of throwing dust in the eyes of his advocates, bankers, and insular councillors, who (having expected him to make money for them by magic) were beginning to whisper that all was not well with his financial schemes.

I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that moment the most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that, shattered in health and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this wild extravagance equally to assert his solvency and to gratify his lifelong passion under the very wing of Death.

But oh, my wild woe, my frantic prayers! It was almost as if Satan himself were torturing me.

The one terror of the next few days was that my husband might return home, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the whole world of make-believe which my father and Alma were setting up around me would tumble about my head like a pack of cards.

He did not come, but he wrote. After saying that his political duties would keep him in London a little longer, he said:

"I hear that your father is getting you to give a great reception in honour 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 my feet to my heart. My position was becoming intolerable. The conviction was 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 the sense 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 no right to be there.

It made no difference that the man I had married was an utterly bad husband--I had no right to be there.

It made no difference that I was not really an adulterous wife--I had no right to be there.

Meanwhile Price, my maid, but my only real friend in Castle Raa, with the liberty I allowed her, was unconsciously increasing my torture. Every night as she combed out my hair she gave me her opinion of my attitude towards Alma, and one night she said:

"Didn't I tell you she was only watching you, my lady? The nasty-minded thing is making mischief with his lordship. She's writing to him every day. . . . How do I know? Oh, I don't keep my eyes and my ears open downstairs 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 my face 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 heard Price 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 the reception for a month after the day of my father's visit, and sent out invitations to all "the insular gentry" included in the lists which came from Nessy MacLeod in her stiff and formal handwriting.

These lists came morning after morning, until the invitations issued reached the grand total of five hundred.

As the rooms of the Castle were not large enough to accommodate so many guests, Alma proposed to erect a temporary pavilion. My father agreed, and within a week hundreds of workmen from Blackwater were setting up a vast wooden structure, in the form of the Colosseum, on the headlands beyond the garden where Martin and I had walked together.

While the work went on my father's feverish pride seemed to increase. I heard of messages to Alma saying that no money was to be spared. The reception was to surpass in grandeur any fête ever held in Ellan. Not knowing what high stakes my father was playing for, I was frightened by this extravagance, and from that cause alone I wished to escape from the sight of it.

I could not escape.

I felt sure that Alma hated me with an implacable hatred, and that she was trying to drive me away, thinking that would be the easiest means to gain her own ends. For this reason, among others, the woman in me would not let me fly, so I remained and went through a purgatory of suffering.

Price, too, who had reconciled herself to my revelation, was always urging 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, giving elaborate accounts of what limitless wealth could accomplish for a single night's entertainment. In these descriptions there was much eulogy of my father as "the uncrowned king of Ellan," as well as praise of Alma, who was "displaying such daring originality," but little or no mention of myself.

Nevertheless everybody seemed to understand the inner meaning of the forthcoming reception, and in the primitive candour of our insular manners some of the visits I received were painfully embarrassing.

One of the first to come was my father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, who smiled his usual bland smile and combed his long beard while he thanked me for acting on his advice not to allow a fit of pique to break up a marriage which was so suitable from points of property and position.

"How happy your father must be to see the fulfilment of his hopes," he said. "Just when his health is failing him, too! How good! How gratifying!"

The next to come was the Bishop, who, smooth and suave as ever, congratulated me on putting aside all thoughts of divorce, so that the object of my marriage might be fulfilled and a good Catholic become the heir 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 not visit me, but having heard an angel's whisper of the sweet joy that was coming to me, he prayed the Lord and His Holy Mother to carry me safely through.

"I have said a rosary for you every day since you were here, my dear child, that you might be saved from a great temptation. And now I know you have been, and the sacrament of your holy marriage has fulfilled its mission, as I always knew it would. So God bless you, my daughter, and keep you pure and fit for eternal union with that blessed saint, your mother, whom the Lord has made His own."

More than ever after this letter I felt that I must fly from my husband's house, but, thinking of Alma, my wounded pride, my outraged vanity (as I say, the _woman_ in me), would not let me go.

Three weeks passed.