Chapter I: Am Found (1)

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH CHAPTER

My return to consciousness was a painful, yet joyful experience. It was almost like being flung in a frail boat out of a tempestuous sea into a quiet harbour.

I seemed to hear myself saying, "My child shall not die. Poverty shall not kill her. I am going to take her into the country . . . she will recover. . . . No, no, it is not Martin. Martin is dead. . . . But his eyes . . . don't you see his eyes. . . . Let me go."

Then all the confused sense of nightmare seemed to be carried away as by some mighty torrent, and there came a great calm, a kind of morning sweetness, with the sun shining through my closed eyelids, and not a sound 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. It was a little like the Reverend Mother's room in Rome, having pictures of the Saints on the walls, and a large figure of the Sacred Heart over the mantelpiece; but there was a small gas fire, and a canary singing in a gilded cage that hung in front of the window.

I was trying to collect my senses in order to realize where I was when Sister Mildred's kind face, in her white wimple and gorget, leaned over me, and she said, with a tender smile, "You are awake now, my child?"

Then memory came rushing back, and though the immediate past was still like 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 had contradicted it."

"Where is he?" I asked, rising from my pillow.

"Hush! Lie quiet. You are not to excite yourself. I must call the doctor."

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 better rapidly. So lie down, and be quiet," said Mildred, and with a long breath 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), and then some indistinct words came hack in the thick telephone voice like that of a dumb man shouting down a tunnel, followed by sepulchral peals of merry laughter.

"The doctor will be here presently," said Mildred, returning to me with a 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 the whirr of an electric bell in the corridor outside, followed (as soon as Mildred 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, his face ablaze with smiles.

"By the Saints of heaven, this is good, though," he said. "It's worth a hundred 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 I had been ill, seriously ill, being two days unconscious, and that Martin had been in a state of the greatest anxiety.

"He's coming, isn't he?" I said. "Will he be here soon? How does he look? Is he well? Did he finish his work?"

"Now, now, now," said the doctor, with uplifted hands. "If it's exciting yourself like this you're going to be, it isn't myself that will he taking the risk of letting him come at all."

But after I had pleaded and prayed and promised to be good he consented to allow Martin to see me, and then it was as much as I could do not to throw my arms about his neck and kiss him.

I had not noticed what Mildred was doing during this time, and almost before 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 emphasis which I knew by long experience to be the surest sign of my dear Father's own perturbation.

I did not know then, or indeed until long afterwards, that for six months 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 the morning); but something in his tender old face, which was seamed and worn, so touched me with the memory of the last scene in my mother's room that my eyes began to overflow, and seeing this he began to laugh and let loose his Irish tongue on us.

"My blissing on you, doctor! It's the mighty proud man ye'll be entoirely to be saving the life of the swatest woman in the world. And whisha, Sister, if ye have a nip of something neat anywhere handy, faith it isn't my cloth will prevent me from drinking the health of everybody."

If this was intended to cheer me up it failed completely, for the next thing I knew was that the doctor was bustling the dear old Father out of the room, and that Mildred was going out after him.

She left the door open, though, and as soon as I had calmed down a little I listened intently for every sound outside.

It was then that I heard the whirr of the electric bell again, but more softly this time, and followed by breathless whispered words in the corridor (as of some one who had been running) and once more . . . I knew, I knew, I knew!

After a moment Mildred came to ask me in a whisper if I was quite sure that I could control myself, and though my heart was thumping against my breast, I answered Yes.

Then I called for a hand-glass and made my hair a shade neater, and after that I closed my eyes (God knows why) and waited.

There was a moment of silence, dead silence, and then--then I opened my eyes and saw him standing in the open doorway.

His big, strong, bronzed face--stronger than ever now, and marked with a certain change from the struggles he had gone through--was utterly broken up. For some moments he did not speak, but I could see that he saw the change that life had made in me also. Then in a low voice, so low 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, and kissed the arms and hands I was stretching out to him.

That was more than I could bear, and the next thing I heard was my darling'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 though Martin was not permitted to stay more than a moment longer, a mighty wave of happiness flowed over me, such as I had never known before and may never know again.

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH CHAPTER

I had such a beautiful convalescence. For the major operations of the Great Surgeon an anæsthetic has not yet been found, but within a week I was sitting up again, mutilated, perhaps, but gloriously alive and without the whisper of a cry.

By this time Father Dan had gone back to Ellan (parting from me with a solemn face as he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace"), and Sister Mildred had obtained permission to give up one of her rooms to me as long as I should need it.

Martin came to see me every day, first for five minutes, then ten, and finally for a quarter and even half an hour. He brought such an atmosphere of health with him, that merely to hold his hand seemed to give me new strength--being so pale and bloodless now that I thought the sun might have shone through me as through a sea-gull.

I could scarcely believe it was not a dream that he was sitting by my side, and sometimes I felt as if I had to touch him to make sure he was there.

How he talked to keep up my spirits! It was nearly always about his expedition (never about me or my experiences, for that seemed a dark scene from which he would not draw the curtain), and I was all a-tremble as I listened to the story of his hair-breadth escapes, though he laughed and made so light of them.

It nearly broke my heart that he had not got down to the Pole; and when he told me that it was the sense of my voice calling to him which had brought him back from the 88th latitude, I felt as if I had been a coward, unworthy of the man who loved me.

Sometimes he talked about baby--he called her "Girlie"--telling a funny story of how he had carried her off from Ilford, where the bricklayer had suddenly conceived such a surprising affection for my child ("what he might go so far as to call a fatherly feeling") that he had been unwilling to part with her until soothed down by a few sovereigns--not to say frightened by a grasp of Martin's iron hand which had nearly broken his wrist.

"She's as right as a trivet now, though," said Martin, "and I'll run down 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 be with me in the flesh he was with me in the spirit, by means of the newspapers which Mildred brought up in armfuls.

I liked the illustrated ones best, with their pictures of scenes in the Expedition, particularly the portraits of Martin himself in his Antarctic outfit, with his broad throat, determined lips, clear eyes, and that general resemblance to the people we all know which makes us feel that the great men of every age are brothers of one family.

But what literary tributes there were, too! What interviews, what articles! A member of the scientific staff had said that "down there," with Nature in her wrath, where science was nothing and even physical strength was not all, only one thing really counted, and that was the heroic soul, and because Martin had it, he had always been the born leader 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 in an age when one half of the world seemed to be thinking of nothing but the acquisition of wealth (that made me think of my father) and the other half of nothing but the pursuit of pleasure (that reminded me of my husband and Alma), there could be found men like Martin Conrad and his dauntless comrades who had faced death for the sake of an ideal and were ready to do so again.

Oh dear! what showers of tears I shed over those newspapers! But the personal 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 anxiety on the night of that function, I remember, until Dr. O'Sullivan (heaven bless, him!) came flying upstairs, to tell me that it had been a "splendid success," and Martin's speech (he hadn't prepared a word of it) "a perfect triumph."

Then some of the Universities conferred degrees on my darling, which was a source of inexpressible amusement to him, especially when (after coming back from Edinburgh) he marched up and down my room in his Doctor's cap and gown, and I asked him to spell "promise" and he couldn't.

Oh, the joy of it all! It was so great a joy that at length it became a pain.

The climax came when the Home Secretary wrote to say that the King had been graciously pleased to confer a Knighthood upon Martin, in recognition of his splendid courage and the substantial contribution he had already made to the material welfare of the world.

That frightened me terribly, though only a woman would know why. It was one thing to share the honours of the man I loved (however secretly and as it were by stealth), but quite another thing to feel that they were carrying him away from me, drawing him off, lifting him up, and leaving me far below.

When the sense of this became acute I used to sit at night, when Mildred was out at her work, by the lofty window of her room, looking down on the precincts of Piccadilly, and wondering how much my darling really knew about the impulse that took me there, and how nearly (but for the grace of God) its awful vortex had swallowed me up.

It was then that I began to write these notes (having persuaded Mildred to buy me this big book with its silver clasp and key), not intending at first to tell the whole story of my life, but only to explain to him for whom everything has been written (what I could not bring myself to say face to face), how it came to pass that I was tempted to that sin which is 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 was beginning to feel that Martin (who had not yet been home) was being kept in London on my account, when Dr. O'Sullivan announced that I was well enough 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 sort of call to one's heart from the soil that gave one birth, but in my case it was coupled with a chilling thought of the poor welcome I should receive there, my father's house being closed to me and my husband's abandoned 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 (about the downfall of my father's financial schemes); some of it deliciously wicked, such as it would have required an angel not to rejoice in (about the bad odour in which Alma and my husband were now held, making the pendulum of popular feeling swing back in my direction); and some of it utterly heart-breaking in its assurances of the love still felt for me in my native place.

Of course the sweetest part of that came from Christian Ann, who, after a stiff fight with her moral principles, had said that whatever I had done I was as "pure as the mountain turf," and, who then charged Father Dan with the message that "Mary O'Neill's little room" was waiting for her still.

This settled everything--everything except one thing, and that was the greatest thing of all. But when Martin came later the same day, having received 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 with my 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 go back 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 of health herself, had been permitted to take me home.

Shall I ever forget our arrival at Blackwater! The steamer we sailed in was streaming with flags from stem to stern, and as she slid up the harbour the dense crowds that packed the pier from end to end seemed frantic with excitement. Such shouting and cheering! Such waving of hats and handkerchiefs!

There was a sensible pause, I thought, a sort of hush, when the gangway being run down, Martin was seen to give his arm to me, and I was recognised as the lost and dishonoured one.

But even that only lasted for a moment, it was almost as if the people felt that this act of Martin's was of a piece with the sacred courage that had carried him down near to the Pole, for hardly had he brought me ashore, and put me into the automobile waiting to take us away, when the cheering 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, could make me otherwise than proud and happy.

We drove home, with the sunset in our faces, over the mountain road which I had crossed with my husband on the day of my marriage; and when we came to our own village I could not help seeing that a little--just a little--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 then some of the village women, who had smartened themselves up in their Sunday clothes, reached over and shook hands with me, speaking about things 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 Martin saluted old friends (he remembered everybody by name) Father Dan talked in my ear about the "domestic earthquake" that had been going on at Sunny Lodge, everything topsy-turvy until to-day, the little room being made ready for me, and the best bedroom (the doctor's and Christian Ann's) for Martin, and the "loft" over the dairy for the old people themselves--as if their beloved son had been good in not forgetting them, 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 he smoke?"

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 the cawing of the rooks in the elms, I should not have known when we were there.

The old doctor (his face overflowing with happiness, and his close-cropped white head bare, as if he had torn out of the house at the toot of our horn) met us as we turned into the lane, and for the little that was left of our journey he walked blithely as a boy by the car, at the side on which Martin sat.

I reached forward to catch the first sight of Sunny Lodge, and there it was behind its fuchsia hedge, which was just breaking into bloom.

There was Christian Ann, too, at the gate in her sunbonnet; and before the automobile had come to a stand Martin was out of it and had her in his arms.

I knew what that meant to the dear sweet woman, and for a moment my spirits failed me, because it flashed upon my mind that perhaps her heart had only warmed to me for the sake of her son.

But just as I was stepping out of the car, feeling physically weak and slipping a little, though Father Dan and Sister Mildred were helping me to 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, God bless 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 its odour of clean white linen and sweet-smelling scraas, the sun was shining in at the half-open window, birds were singing, cattle were lowing, young lambs were bleating, a crow was cawing its way across the sky, and under the sounds of the land there was a far-off murmur of the sea.

Through the floor (unceiled beneath) I could hear the Doctor and Christian Ann chortling away in low tones like two cheerful old love-birds; and when I got up and looked out I saw the pink and white blossom of the apple and plum trees, and smelt the smoke of burning peat from 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 to the 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 on the high mantelpiece, she cried again, as if addressing the universe in general, for there was nobody else in the room:

"Look at that now! She's been out in the big world, and seen great wonders, and a power of people I'll go bail, but there she is, as nice and comfortable as if she had never been away!"

Sister Mildred came down next; and then the old doctor, who had been watching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old people's bedroom 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 homely beauty of that morning meal, with its porridge, its milk, its honey and cakes, 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 in being waited upon once more, being asked what I would like, and getting it, giving orders and being obeyed--me, me, me!

At length in the exercise of my authority I insisted on Christian Ann sitting down too, which she did, though she didn't eat, but went on talking in her dear, simple, delicious way.

It was always about Martin, and the best of it was about her beautiful faith that he was still alive when the report came that he had been lost at sea.

What? Her son dying like that, and she old and the sun going down on her? Never! Newspapers? Chut, who cared what people put in the papers? If Martin had really been lost, wouldn't _she_ have known it--having borne him on her bosom ("a middling hard birth, too"), and being the first to hear his living voice in the world?

So while people thought she was growing "weak in her intellects," she had clung to the belief that her beloved son would come back to her. And behold! one dark night in winter, when she was sitting in the _chiollagh_ alone, and the wind was loud in the trees, and the doctor upstairs was calling on her to come to bed ("you're wearing yourself away, woman"), she heard a sneck of the garden gate and a step on the gravel path, and it was old Tommy the Mate, who without waiting for her to 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 (the same, I do declare, that he had worn when I was a child), and then Martin himself came swinging up, with his big voice, like a shout from the quarter-deck.

"Helloa! Stunning morning, isn't it?"

It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his mother, though there was not too much reverence in his teasing, and hardly more love than license.

When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house, and said she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was ready to settle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have to go back to London presently, she cried:

"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been away, it's witched they are--longing and longing to go back again. What's there in London that's wanting him?"

Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud lift of his 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 you want a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust but I might give 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't come here expecting his mother and his old priest to worship him."

How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was doing most, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in all my life before.

Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke, and Sister Mildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann took up her knitting, 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 and fatuity, sending some to the asylum and some to the graveyard, and certain of the managers of corporations and banks to gaol.

My father himself had escaped prosecution; but he was supposed to be a ruined man, dying of cancer, and had gone to live in his mother's old cottage on the curragh, with only Nessy MacLeod to care for him--having left the Big House to Aunt Bridget and cousin Betsy, who declared (so I gathered or guessed) that I had disgraced their name and should never look on their faces again.

"But dear heart alive, that won't cut much ice, will it?" said Christian Ann, catching a word of Martin's.

Later in the day, being alone with the old doctor. I heard something of my husband also--that he had applied (according to the laws of Ellan) for an Act of Divorce, and that our insular legislature was likely to grant it.

Still later, having walked out into the garden, where the bluebells were in bloom, I, too, heard the sneck of the gate, and it was old Tommy again, 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," but feeling "well tremenjus."

He had brought the "full of his coat-pockets" of lobsters and crabs for me ("wonderful good for invalids, missie") and the "full of his mouth" of the doings at Castle Raa, which he had left immediately after myself--Price also, neither of them being willing to stay with a master who had "the rough word" for everybody, and a "misthress" who had "the black 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 more upon earth and man, and body and soul in myself were undergoing a resurrection no less marvellous.

After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able to take walks with Martin--through the leafy lanes with the golden gorse on the high turf hedges and its nutty odour in the air, as far, sometimes, as to the shore, where we talked about "asploring" or perhaps (without speaking at all) looked into each other's eyes and laughed.

There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation from my child, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in my own position which the presence of my baby would make acute (setting all the evil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I grew stronger, I yearned for my little treasure.

The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage and asked Martin if I might have my precious darling back.

"Girlie?" he cried. "Certainly you may. You are well enough now, so why shouldn't you? I'm going to London on Exploration business soon, and I'll bring her home with me."

But when he was gone (Mildred went with him) I was still confronted by one cause of anxiety--Christian Ann. I could not even be sure she knew of the existence of my child, still less that Martin intended to fetch her.

So once more I took my heart in both hands, and while we sat together in the garden, with the sunlight pouring through the trees, Christian Ann knitting and I pretending to read, I told her all.

She knew everything already, the dear old thing, and had only been waiting for me to speak. After dropping a good many stitches she said:

"The world will talk, and dear heart knows what Father Dan himself will say. But blood's thicker than water even if it's holy water, and she's my own child's child, God bless her!"

After that we had such delicious times together, preparing for the little stranger who was to come--cutting up blankets and sheets, and smuggling down from the "loft" to "Mary O'Neill's room" the wooden cradle which had once been Martin's, and covering it with bows and ribbons.

We kept the old doctor in the dark (pretended we did) and when he wondered "what all the fuss was about," and if "the island expected a visit from the Queen," we told him (Christian Ann did) to "ask us no questions and we'd tell no lies."

What children we were, we two mothers, the old one and the young one! I used to hint, with an air of great mystery, that my baby had "somebody's eyes," 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 one child twenty-five years before, was my general guide and counsellor, answering all my foolish questions when I counted up baby's age (eleven months now) and wondered if she could walk and talk by this time, how many of her little teeth should have come and whether she could remember me.

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 must have made the very Saints themselves look down on us and laugh.

Before I opened my eyes in the morning I was saying to myself, "Now they're on their way to Euston," and every time I heard the clock strike I was thinking, "Now they're in the train," or "Now they're at Liverpool," 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 was long.

Christian Ann was even more excited than myself; and though she was always reproving me for my nervousness and telling me to be composed, I saw her put the kettle instead of the tea-pot on to the tablecloth, and the porridge-stick into the fire in place of the tongs.

Towards evening, when Martin was due, I had reduced myself to such a state of weakness that Christian Ann wanted to put me to bed; but sitting down in the _chiollagh_, and watching the road from the imprisonment of the "elbow-chair," I saw at last the two big white eyes of the automobile wheeling round in the dusk by the gate of my father's house.

A few minutes afterwards Martin came sweeping into the kitchen with a nice-looking nurse behind him, carrying my darling at her breast.

She was asleep, but the light of the fire soon wakened her, and then a strange thing happened.

I had risen from my seat, and Christian Ann had come hurrying up, and we two women were standing about baby, both ready to clutch at her, when she blinked her blue eyes and looked at us, and then held out her arms to her grandmother!

That nearly broke my heart for a moment (though now I thank the Lord for it), but it raised Christian Ann into the seventh heaven of rapture.

"Did you see that now?" she cried, clasping my baby to her bosom--her eyes glistening as with sunshine, though her cheeks were slushed as with rain.

I got my treasure to myself at last (Christian Ann having to show the nurse up to her bedroom), and then, being alone with Martin, I did not care, in the intoxication of my happiness, how silly I was in my praise of 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, and though I tried to make light of it, he gave me no peace until I had told him what it meant--with all the humiliating story of my last night at Castle 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 his face was so fierce that it made me afraid.

But just at that moment Christian Ann came downstairs, and the old doctor returned from his rounds, and then Tommy the Mate looked in on his way to the "Plough," and hinting at my going to church again some day, gave it as his opinion that if I put the "boght mulish" under my "perricut" (our old island custom for legitimising children) "the Bishop himself couldn't say nothin' against it"-at which Martin laughed so much that 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 drag it out of her) I felt that if I had been within a hundred miles at the time, and had had to crawl home to the man on my hands and knees, there wouldn'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 a Christian world could not go on a day longer until I had paid it back--with interest.

So fearing that my tender-hearted little woman, if she got wind of my purpose, might make me promise to put away my vow of vengeance, I got up early next morning and ordered the motor-car to be made ready for a visit to Castle Raa.

Old Tommy happened to be in the yard of the inn while I was speaking to the chauffeur, and he asked if he might be allowed to go with me. I agreed, and when I came out to start he was sitting in a corner of the car, with his Glengarry pulled down over his shaggy eyebrows, and his knotty hands leaning on a thick blackthorn that had a head as big as a turnip.

We did not talk too much on the way--I had to save up my strength for better business--and it was a long spin, but we got to our journey's end towards the middle of the morning.

As we went up the drive (sacred to me by one poignant memory) an open carriage was coming down. The only occupant was a rather vulgar-looking elderly woman (in large feathers and flowing furbelows) whom I took to be the mother of Alma.

Three powdered footmen came to the door of the Castle as our car drove up. Their master was out riding. They did not know when he would be back.

"I'll wait for him," I said, and pushed into the hall, old Tommy following me.

I think the footmen had a mind to intercept us, but I suppose there was something in my face which told them it would be better not to try, so I walked into the first room with the door open.

It turned out to be the dining-room, with portraits of the owner's ancestors 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 sitting on the first chair by the door, and I on the end of the table, neither saying a word to the other, when there came the sound of horses' hoofs on the path outside. A little later there were voices in the hall, both low and loud ones--the footmen evidently announcing my arrival and their master abusing them for letting me into the house.

At the next moment the man came sweeping into the dining-room. He was carrying a heavy hunting-crop and his flabby face was livid. Behind him came Alma. She was in riding costume and was bending a lithe whip in her gloved hands.

I saw that my noble lord was furious, but that mood suited me as well as another, 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 have taken 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 by your 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 about over such a person. Better ring the bell for the servants and have him turned out of doors."

I looked round at her. She tried an insolent smile, but it broke down badly, 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 my house?"

"I'm not," I replied. "But before I leave it, I believe _you'll_ be ashamed 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 I stated my business without more ado.

I told him what he had done to the woman who was ten thousand times too good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and finally striking her in the face like a coward and a cur.

"Liar!" he cried, fairly gasping in his rage. "You're a liar and your informant 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 looking frightened, tried to follow him.

I stopped her. Rising from the table, I stepped over to the door and locked it.

"No, madam," I said. "I want you to see what takes place between his lordship and me."

The wretched woman fell back, but the man, grinding his teeth, came marching 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 _thrash you_."

That was enough for him, he lifted his hunting-crop to strike, but it didn't take long to get that from his hand or to paralyse the arm with which 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 him while he fumed and foamed, and cursed and swore. I thrashed him while he cried for help, and then yelled with pain and whined for mercy. I thrashed him under the eyes of his ancestors, the mad, bad race he came from, and, him the biggest blackguard of them all. And then I flung him to 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 you can'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, like that of a captured she-bear. It was from the woman. The wretched creature was on her knees at the farthest corner of the room, apparently mumbling prayers, as if in terror that her own turn might be coming next.

In her sobbing fear I thought she looked more than ever like a poisonous snake, and I will not say that the old impulse to put my foot on it did not come back for a moment. But I only said as I passed, pointing to the writhing 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 been going through, I could have laughed at the scene outside.

There was old Tommy with his back to the dining-room door, his Glengarry awry on his tousled head, and his bandy legs stretched firmly apart, flourishing his big-headed blackthorn before the faces of the three powdered 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 house while the chauffeur was starting the motor and Tommy was wiping his steaming 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 wink of his "starboard eye."

"I believe I did," I answered.

"I allus said you would. 'Wait till himself is after coming home, and it'll be the devil sit up for some of them,' says I."

There was only one limitation to Tommy's satisfaction over our day's expedition--that he had not cracked the powdered skulls of "some o' them riddiclus dunkeys."

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

ONE HUNDRED AND NINTH CHAPTER

Another month passed, and then began the last and most important phase of 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 (for which Parliament had voted a large sum), and when he was at home with reports, diaries, charts, maps, and photographs toward a book he was writing 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 and tender nursing (God bless Christian Ann for all she did for me!), my health had improved every day--or perhaps, by that heavenly hopefulness which goes with certain maladies, it had seemed to me to do so.

Yet mine was a sort of twilight happiness, nevertheless. Though the sun was always shining in my sky, it was frequently under eclipse. In spite of the sheltered life I lived in that home of charity and love, I was never entirely free from a certain indefinable uneasiness about my position.

I was always conscious, too, that Martin's mother and father, not to speak of Father Dan, were suffering from a similar feeling, for sometimes when we talked about the future their looks would answer to my thoughts, 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 her butter in the dairy, I was playing with baby on the rag-work hearthrug when 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 casually glanced at it.

But what a shock it gave me! The first heading that flew in my face was--

"INSULAR DIVORCE BILL PASSED."

It was a report of the proceedings of the Supreme Court of our Ellan legislature, which (notwithstanding the opposition of its ecclesiastical members) had granted my husband's petition.

Perhaps I ought to have had a sense of immense relief. Or perhaps I should have gone down on my knees there and then, and thanked God that the miserable entanglement of the horrible marriage that had been forced upon me was at last at an end.

But no, I had only one feeling as the newspaper fell from my fingers--shame and humiliation, not for myself (for what did it matter about me, anyway?), but for Martin, whose name, now so famous, I had, through my husband's malice, been the means of dragging through the dust.

I remember that I thought I should never be able to look into my darling's face again, that when he came in the afternoon (as he always did) I should have to run away from him, and that all that was left to me was to hide myself and die.

But just as these wild thoughts were galloping through my brain I heard the sneck of the garden gate, and almost before I was aware of what else was happening Martin had come sweeping into the house like a rush of wind, thrown his arms around me, and covered my face, my neck, and my hands with kisses--never having done so before since I came to live at his 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 from you--all the miserable legal business. But no matter! It's over now. Of course it's shocking--perfectly shocking--that that squirming worm, after his gross infidelities, should have been able to do what he has done. But what matter about that either? He has done just what we wanted--what you couldn't do for yourself before I went away, your conscience 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 believe fully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long had come to me at 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 and wife?"

"Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I do think it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough, my poor girl. But all that you have gone through has to be forgotten, and you are never to look back again."

"Yes, yes, I know I should be happy, very happy," I said, "but what about 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 doing it), "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 then snatched me still closer to his breast.

"Mary," he cried, "don't ask me to consider what the damnable insincerities of society may say to a case like ours. If _you_ don't care, then neither do I. And as for the world, by the Lord God I swear that all I ask of it I am now holding in my arms."

That conquered me--poor trembling hypocrite that I was, praying with all my soul that my objections would be overcome.

In another moment I had thrown my arms about my Martin's neck and kissed and kissed him, feeling for the first time after my months and years of fiery 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, what foolish rein I gave to my new-born rapture!

I picked baby up from the hearthrug and kissed her also, and then took her into the dairy to be kissed by her grandmother, who must have overheard what had passed between Martin and me, for I noticed that her voice had suddenly become livelier and at least an octave higher.

Then, baby being sleepy, I took her upstairs for her morning nap, and after leaning over her cradle, in the soft, damp, milk-like odour of her sweet body and breath, I stood up before the glass and looked at my own hot, tingling, blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

Oh, what gorgeous dreams of happiness came to me! I may have been the unmarried mother of a child, but my girlhood--my lost girlhood--was flowing back upon me. A vision of my marriage-day rose up before me and I 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 had always been happy. It was almost as though some blessed stream of holy water had washed my memory clean of all the soilure of my recent days in London, for sure I am that if anybody had at that moment mentioned Ilford and the East End, the bricklayer and the Jew, or spoken of the maternity homes and the orphanages, I should have screamed.

Towards noon the old doctor came back from his morning rounds, and I noticed that _his_ voice was pitched higher too. We never once spoke about the great news, the great event, while we sat at table; but I could not help noticing that we were all talking loud and fast and on the top of each other, as if some dark cloud which had hovered over our household 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 for Martin, who must be still pondering over his papers at the "Plough."

How beautiful was the day! How blue the sky! How bright the earth! How joyous 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 be good to everybody else--especially to my father, from whom it seemed wrong for a daughter to be estranged, whatever he was and whatever he had done to her.

So I turned my face towards my poor grandmother's restored cottage on the curragh, fully determined to be reconciled to my father; and I only slackened my steps and gave up my purpose when I began to think of Nessy MacLeod and how difficult (perhaps impossible) it might be to reach him.