Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

If there were moments of misgiving, when, like the cold wind out of a tunnel, there came the memory of the Reverend Mother and the story she had told me at Nemi, there were other moments when I felt quite sure that, in marrying Lord Raa, I should be doing a self-sacrificing thing and a kind of solemn duty.

One such moment was when Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, who with his clammy hands always made me think of an over-fatted fish, came to tell him that, after serious legal difficulties, the civil documents had been agreed to, for, after he had finished with my father, he drew me aside and said, as he smoothed his long brown beard:

"You ought to be a happy girl, Mary. I suppose you know what you are doing for your father? You are wiping out the greatest disappointment of his life, and rectifying the cruelty--the inevitable cruelty--of the law, when you were born a daughter after he had expected a son."

Another such moment was when the Bishop came, in his grand carriage, to say that after much discussion he had persuaded his lordship to sign the necessary declaration that all the children of our union, irrespective of sex, should be brought up as Catholics, for taking me aside, as the advocate had done the day before, he said, in his suave voice, fingering his jewelled cross:

"I congratulate you, my child. Yours is a great and precious privilege--the privilege of bringing back to the Church a family which has been estranged from it for nineteen years."

At the end of a fortnight we signed the marriage settlement. The little ceremony took place in the drawing-room of my father's house. My intended husband, who had not been to see me in the meantime, brought with him (as well as his trustee and lawyer) a lady and a gentleman.

The lady was his maiden aunt, Lady Margaret Anslem, a fair woman of about forty, fashionably dressed, redolent of perfume, and (except to me, to whom she talked quite amicably) rather reserved and haughty, as if the marriage of her nephew into our family were a bitter pill which she had compelled herself to swallow.

The gentleman was a tall young man wearing a very high collar and cravat, and using a handkerchief with embroidered initials in the corner of it. He turned out to be the Hon. Edward Eastcliff--the great friend who, being rich enough to please himself, was about to marry the professional beauty.

I noticed that Aunt Bridget, with something of the instinct of the fly about the flame, immediately fixed herself upon the one, and that Betsy Beauty attached herself to the other.

Lord Raa himself looked as tired as before, and for the first half-hour he behaved as if he did not quite know what to do with himself for wretchedness and _ennui_.

Then the deeds were opened and spread out on a table, and though the gentlemen seemed to be trying not to discuss the contents aloud I could not help hearing some of the arrangements that had been made for the payment of my intended husband's debts, and certain details of his annual allowance.

Looking back upon that ugly hour, I wonder why, under the circumstances, I should have been so wounded, but I remember that a sense of discomfort amounting to shame came upon me at sight of the sorry bargaining. It seemed to have so little to do with the spiritual union of souls, which I had been taught to think marriage should be. But I had no time to think more about that before my father, who had signed the documents himself in his large, heavy hand, was saying.

"Now, gel, come along, we're waiting for your signature."

I cannot remember that I read anything. I cannot remember that anything was read to me. I was told where to sign, and I signed, thinking what must be must be, and that was all I had to do with the matter.

I was feeling a little sick, nevertheless, and standing by the tire with one foot on the fender, when Lord Raa came up to me at the end, and said in his drawling voice:

"So it's done."

"Yes, it's done," I answered.

After a moment he talked of where we were to live, saying we must of course pass most of our time in London.

"But have you any choice about the honeymoon," he said, "where we should spend it, I mean?"

I answered that he would know best, but when he insisted on my choosing, saying it was my right to do so, I remembered that during my time in the Convent the one country in the world I had most desired to see was the Holy Land.

Never as long as I live shall I forget the look in his lordship's grey eyes when I gave this as my selection.

"You mean Jerusalem--Nazareth--the Dead Sea and all that?" he asked.

I felt my face growing red as at a frightful _faux pas_, but his lordship only laughed, called me his "little nun," and said that since I had been willing to leave the choice to him he would suggest Egypt and Italy, and Berlin and Paris on the way back, with the condition that we left Ellan for London on the day of our marriage.

After the party from Castle Raa had gone, leaving some of their family lace and pearls behind for the bride to wear at her wedding, and after Aunt Bridget had hoped that "that woman" (meaning Lady Margaret) didn't intend to live at the Castle after my marriage, because such a thing would not fit in with her plans "at all, at all," I mentioned the arrangements for the honeymoon, whereupon Betsy Beauty, to whom Italy was paradise, and London glimmered in an atmosphere of vermillion and gold, cried out as usual:

"What a lucky, lucky girl you are!"

But the excitement which had hitherto buoyed me up was partly dispelled by this time, and I was beginning to feel some doubt of it.

TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER

As my wedding-day approached and time ran short, the air of joy which had pervaded our house was driven out by an atmosphere of irritation. We were all living on our nerves. The smiles that used to be at everybody's service gave place to frowns, and, in Aunt Bridget's case, to angry words which were distributed on all sides and on all occasions.

As a consequence I took refuge in my room, and sat long hours there in my dressing-gown and slippers, hearing the hubbub that was going on in the rest of the house, but taking as little part in it as possible. In this semi-conventual silence and solitude, the excitement which had swept me along for three weeks subsided rapidly.

I began to think, and above all to feel, and the one thing I felt beyond everything else was a sense of something wanting.

I remembered the beautiful words of the Pope about marriage as a mystic relation, a sacred union of souls, a bond of love such as Christ's love for His Church, and I asked myself if I felt any such love for the man who was to become my husband.

I knew I did not. I reminded myself that I had had nearly no conversation with him, that our intercourse had been of the briefest, that I had seen him only three times altogether, and that I scarcely knew him at all.

And yet I was going to marry him! In a few days more I should be his wife, and we should be bound together as long as life should last!

Then I remembered what Father Dan had said about a girl's first love, her first love-letter, and all the sweet, good things that should come to her at the time of her marriage.

None of them had come to me. I do not think my thoughts of love were ever disturbed by any expectation of the delights of the heart--languors of tenderness, long embraces, sighs and kisses, and the joys and fevers of the flesh--for I knew nothing about them. But, nevertheless, I asked myself if I had mistaken the matter altogether. Was love really necessary? In all their busy preparations neither my father, nor my husband, nor the lawyers, nor the Bishop himself, had said anything about that.

I began to sleep badly and to dream. It was always the same dream. I was in a frozen region of the far north or south, living in a ship which was stuck fast in the ice, and had a great frowning barrier before it that was full of dangerous crevasses. Then for some reason I wanted to write a letter, but was unable to do so, because somebody had trodden on my pen and broken it.

It seems strange to me now as I look back upon that time, that I did not know what angel was troubling the waters of my soul--that Nature was whispering to me, as it whispers to every girl at the first great crisis of her life. But neither did I know what angel was leading my footsteps when, three mornings before my wedding-day, I got up early and went out to walk in the crisp salt air.

Almost without thinking I turned down the lane that led to the shore, and before I was conscious of where I was going, I found myself near Sunny Lodge. The chimney was smoking for breakfast, and there was a smell of burning turf coming from the house, which was so pretty and unchanged, with the last of the year's roses creeping over the porch and round the windows of the room in which I had slept when a child.

Somebody was digging in the garden. It was the doctor in his shirt sleeves.

"Good morning, doctor," I called, speaking over the fence.

He rested on his spade and looked up, but did not speak for a moment.

"Don't you know who I am?" I asked.

"Why yes, of course; you must be. . . ."

Without finishing he turned his head towards the porch and cried:

"Mother! Mother! Come and see who's here at last!"

Martin's mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I thought, but with the same dear womanly face over her light print frock, which was as sweet as may-blossom.

She held up both hands at sight of me and cried:

"There, now! What did I tell you, doctor! Didn't I say they might marry her to fifty lords, but she wouldn't forget her old friends!"

I laughed, the doctor laughed, and then she laughed, and the sweetest part of it was that she did not know what we were laughing at.

Then I opened the gate and stepped up and held out my hand, and involuntarily she wiped her own hand (which was covered with meal from the porridge she was making) before taking mine.

"Goodness me, it's Mary O'Neill."

"Yes, it's I."

"But let me have a right look at you," she said, taking me now by both hands. "They were saying such wonderful things about the young misthress that I wasn't willing to believe them. But, no, no," she said, after a moment, "they didn't tell me the half."

I was still laughing, but it was as much as I could do not to cry, so I said:

"May I come in?"

"My goodness yes, and welcome," she said, and calling to the doctor to wash his hands and follow us, she led the way into the kitchen-parlour, where the kettle was singing from the "slowery" and a porridge-pot was bubbling over the fire.

"Sit down. Take the elbow-chair in the chiollagh [the hearth place]. There! That's nice. Aw, yes, you know the house."

Being by this time unable to speak for a lump in my throat that was hurting me, I looked round the room, so sweet, so homely, so closely linked with tender memories of my childhood, while Martin's mother (herself a little nervous and with a touching softness in her face) went on talking while she stirred the porridge with a porridge-stick.

"Well, well! To think of all the years since you came singing carols to my door! You remember it, don't you? . . . Of course you do. 'Doctor,' I said, 'don't talk foolish. _She'll_ not forget. _I_ know Mary O'Neill. She may be going to be a great lady, but haven't I nursed her on my knee?'"

"Then you've heard what's to happen?" I asked.

"Aw yes, woman, yes," she answered in a sadder tone, I thought. "Everybody's bound to hear it--what with the bands practising for the procession, and the bullocks roasting for the poor, and the fireworks and the illuminations, and I don't know what."

She was silent for a moment after that, and then in her simple way she said:

"But it's all as one if you love the man, even if he _is_ a lord."

"You think that's necessary, don't you?"

"What, _millish?_"

"Love. You think it's necessary to love one's husband?"

"Goodness sakes, girl, yes. If you don't have love, what have you? What's to keep the pot boiling when the fire's getting low and the winter's coming on, maybe? The doctor's telling me some of the fine ladies in London are marrying without it--just for money and titles and all to that. But I can't believe it, I really can't! They've got their troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and what's the use of their fine clothes and grand carriages when the dark days come and the night's falling on them?"

It was harder than ever to speak now, so I got up to look at some silver cups that stood on the mantelpiece.

"Martin's," said his mother, to whom they were precious as rubies. "He won them at swimming and running and leaping and climbing and all to that. Aw, yes, yes! He was always grand at games, if he couldn't learn his lessons, poor boy. And now he's gone away from us--looking for South Poles somewheres."

"I know--I saw him in Rome," said I.

She dropped her porridge-stick and looked at me with big eyes.

"Saw him? In Rome, you say? After he sailed, you mean?"

I nodded, and then she cried excitedly to the doctor who was just then coming into the house, after washing his hands under the pump.

"Father, she saw himself in Rome after he sailed."

There was only one _himself_ in that house, therefore it was not difficult for the doctor to know who was meant. And so great was the eagerness of the old people to hear the last news of the son who was the apple of their eye that I had to stay to breakfast and tell them all about our meeting.

While Martin's mother laid the tables with oat-cake and honey and bowls of milk and deep plates for the porridge, I told the little there was to tell, and then listened to their simple comments.

"There now, doctor! Think of that! Those two meeting in foreign parts that used to be such friends when they were children! Like brother and sister, you might say. And whiles and whiles we were thinking that some day . . . but we'll say no more about that now, doctor."

"No, we'll say no more about that now, Christian Ann," said the doctor.

Then there was a moment of silence, and it was just as if they had been rummaging among half-forgotten things in a dark corner of their house, and had come upon a cradle, and the child that had lived in it was dead.

It was sweet, but it was also painful to stay long in that house of love, and as soon as I had eaten my oat-cake and honey I got up to go. The two good souls saw me to the door saying I was not to expect either of them at the Big House on my wedding-day, because she was no woman for smart clothes, and the doctor, who was growing rheumatic, had given up his night-calls, and therefore his gig, so as to keep down expenses.

"We'll be at the church, though," said Martin's mother. "And if we don't see you to speak to, you'll know we're there and wishing you happiness in our hearts."

I could not utter a word when I left them; but after I had walked a little way I looked back, intending to wave my farewell, and there they were together at the gate still, and one of her hands was on the doctor's shoulder--the sweet woman who had chosen love against the world, and did not regret it, even now when the night was falling on her.

I had to pass the Presbytery on my way home, and as I did so, I saw Father Dan in his study. He threw up the window sash and called in a soft voice, asking me to wait until he came down to me.

He came down hurriedly, just as he was, in his worn and discoloured cassock and biretta, and walked up the road by my side, breathing rapidly and obviously much agitated.

"The Bishop is staying with me over the wedding, and he is in such a fury that . . . Don't worry. It will be all right. But . . ."

"Yes?"

"Did you see young Martin Conrad while you were in Rome?"

I answered that I did.

"And did anything pass between you . . . about your marriage, I mean?"

I told him all that I had said to Martin, and all that Martin had said to me.

"Because he has written a long letter to the Bishop denouncing it, and calling on him to stop it."

"To stop it?"

"That's so. He says it is nothing but trade and barter, and if the Church is willing to give its blessing to such rank commercialism, let it bless the Stock Exchange, let it sanctify the slave market."

"Well?"

"The Bishop threatens to tell your father. 'Who is this young man,' he says, 'who dares to . . .' But if I thought there was nothing more to your marriage than . . . If I imagined that what occurred in the case of your dear mother . . . But that's not all."

"Not all?"

"No. Martin has written to me too, saying worse--far worse."

"What does he say, Father Dan?"

"I don't really know if I ought to tell you, I really don't. Yet if it's true . . . if there's anything in it . . ."

I was trembling, but I begged him to tell me what Martin had said. He told me. It was about my intended husband--that he was a man of irregular life, a notorious loose liver, who kept up a connection with somebody in London, a kind of actress who was practically his wife already, and therefore his marriage with me would be--so Martin had said--nothing but "legalised and sanctified concubinage."

With many breaks and pauses my dear old priest told me this story, as if it were something so infamous that his simple and innocent heart could scarcely credit it.

"If I really thought it was true," he said, "that a man living such a life could come here to marry my little . . . But no, God could not suffer a thing like that. I must ask, though. I must make sure. We live so far away in this little island that . . . But I must go back now. The Bishop will be calling for me."

Still deeply agitated, Father Dan left me by the bridge, and at the gate of our drive I found Tommy the Mate on a ladder, covering, with flowers from the conservatory, a triumphal arch which the joiner had hammered up the day before.

The old man hardly noticed me as I passed through, and this prompted me to look up and speak to him.

"Tommy," I said, "do you know you are the only one who hasn't said a good word to me about my marriage?"

"Am I, missy?" he answered, without looking down. "Then maybe that's because I've had so many bad ones to say to other people."

I asked which other people.

"Old Johnny Christopher, for one. I met him last night at the 'Horse and Saddle.' 'Grand doings at the Big House, they're telling me,' says Johnny. 'I won't say no,' I says. 'It'll be a proud day for the grand-daughter of Neill the Lord when she's mistress of Castle Raa,' says Johnny. 'Maybe so,' I says, 'but it'll be a prouder day for Castle Raa when she sets her clane little foot in it.'"

TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

I should find it difficult now, after all that has happened since, to convey an adequate idea of the sense of shame and personal dishonour which was produced in me by Father Dan's account of the contents of Martin's letter. It was like opening a door out of a beautiful garden into a stagnant ditch.

That Martin's story was true I had never one moment's doubt, first because Martin had told it, and next because it agreed at all points with the little I had learned of Lord Raa in the only real conversation I had yet had with him.

Obviously he cared for the other woman, and if, like his friend Eastcliff, he had been rich enough to please himself, he would have married her; but being in debt, and therefore in need of an allowance, he was marrying me in return for my father's money.

It was shocking. It was sinful. I could not believe that my father, the lawyers and the Bishop knew anything about it.

I determined to tell them, but how to do so, being what I was, a young girl out of a convent, I did not know.

Never before had I felt so deeply the need of my mother. If she had been alive I should have gone to her, and with my arms about her neck and my face in her breast, I should have told her all my trouble.

There was nobody but Aunt Bridget, and little as I had ever expected to go to her under any circumstances, with many misgivings and after much hesitation I went.

It was the morning before the day of my marriage. I followed my aunt as she passed through the house like a biting March wind, scolding everybody, until I found her in her own room.

She was ironing her new white cap, and as I entered (looking pale, I suppose) she flopped down her flat iron on to its stand and cried:

"Goodness me, girl, what's amiss? Caught a cold with your morning walks, eh? Haven't I enough on my hands without that? We must send for the doctor straight. We can't have _you_ laid up now, after all this trouble and expense."

"It isn't that, Auntie."

"Then in the name of goodness what is it?"

I told her, as well as I could for the cold grey eyes that kept looking at me through their gold-rimmed spectacles. At first my aunt listened with amazement, and then she laughed outright.

"So _you've_ heard that story, have you? Mary O'Neill," she said, with a thump of her flat iron, "I'm surprised at you."

I asked if she thought it wasn't true.

"How do I know if it's true? And what do I care whether it is or isn't? Young men will be young men, I suppose."

She went on with her ironing as she added:

"Did you expect you were marrying a virgin? If every woman asked for that there would be a nice lot of old maids in the world, wouldn't there?"

I felt myself flushing up to the forehead, yet I managed to say:

"But if he is practically married to the other woman. . . ."

"Not he married. Whoever thinks about marriage in company like that? You might as well talk about marriage in the hen coop."

"But all the same if he cares for her, Auntie. . . ."

"Who says he cares for her? And if he does he'll settle her off and get rid of her before he marries you."

"But will that be right?" I said, whereupon my aunt rested her iron and looked at me as if I had said something shameful.

"Mary O'Neill, what do you mean? Of course it will be right. He shouldn't have two women, should he? Do you think the man's a barn-door rooster?"

My confusion was increasing, but I said that in any case my intended husband could not care for _me_, or he would have seen more of me.

"Oh, you'll see enough of him by and by. Don't you worry about that."

I said I was not sure that he had made me care much for him.

"Time enough for that, too. You can't expect the man to work miracles."

Then, with what courage was left me, I tried to say that I had been taught to think of marriage as a sacrament, instituted by the Almighty so that those who entered it might live together in union, peace and love, whereas . . .

But I had to stop, for Aunt Bridget, who had been looking at me with her hard lip curled, said:

"Tut! That's all right to go to church with on Sunday, but on weekdays marriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical matter. Just an arrangement for making a home, and getting a family, and bringing up children--that's what marriage is, if you ask me."

"But don't you think love is necessary?"

"Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about in poetry and songs--bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and all that nonsense--no!" said my aunt, with a heavy bang on her ironing.

"That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love, and it generally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women have nothing to do with it. Look at me," she said, spitting on the bottom of her iron, "do you think I married for love when I married the colonel? No indeed! 'Here's a quiet respectable man with a nice income,' I said, 'and if I put my little bit to his little bit we'll get along comfortably if he _is_ a taste in years,' I said. Look at your mother, though. She was one of the marrying-for-love kind, and if we had let her have her way where would she have been afterwards with her fifteen years as an invalid? And where would you have been by this time? No," said Aunt Bridget, bringing down her flat-iron with a still heavier bang, "a common-sense marriage, founded on suitability of position and property, and all that, is the only proper sort of match. And that's what's before you now, girl, so for goodness' sake don't go about like the parish pan, letting every busybody make mischief with you. My Betsy wouldn't if she had your chance--I can tell you that much, my lady."

I did not speak. There was another bang or two of the flat-iron, and then,

"Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in time. If you don't exactly love your husband when you marry him you'll love him later on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know I had to, and if. . . ."

"But if she can't, Auntie?"

"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about it."

It was useless to say more, so I rose to go.

"Yes, go," said Aunt Bridget. "I'm so bothered with other people's business that my head's all through-others. And, Mary O'Neill," she said, looking after me as I passed through the door, "for mercy's sake do brighten up a hit, and don't look as if marrying a husband was like taking a dose of jalap. It isn't as bad as that, anyway."

It served me right. I should have known better. My aunt and I spoke different languages; we stood on different ground.

Returning to my room I found a letter from Father Dan. It ran--

_"Dear Daughter in Jesus,

"I have been afraid to go far into the story we spoke about from fear of offending my Bishop, but I have inquired of your father and he assures me that there is not a word of truth in it.

"So I am compelled to believe that our good Martin must have been misinformed, and am dismissing the matter from my mind. Trusting you will dismiss it from your mind also,

"Yours in Xt.,

"D.D."_

TWENTY-NINTH CHAPTER

I could not do as Father Dan advised, being now enmeshed in the threads of innumerable impulses unknown to myself, and therefore firmly convinced that Martin's story was not only true, but a part of the whole sordid business whereby a husband was being bought for me.

With this thought I went about all day, asking myself what I could do even yet, but finding no answer until nine o'clock at night, when, immediately after supper (we lived country fashion), Aunt Bridget said:

"Now then, off to bed, girls. Everybody must be stirring early in the morning."

And then I slipped upstairs to my room, and replied to Father Dan.

Never had I written such a letter before. I poured my whole heart on to the paper, saying what marriage meant to me, as the Pope himself had explained it, a sacrament implying and requiring love as the very soul of it, and since I did not feel this love for the man I was about to marry, and had no grounds for thinking he felt it for me, and being sure that other reasons had operated to bring us together, I begged Father Dan, by his memory of my mother, and his affection for me, and his desire to see me good and happy, to intervene with my father and the Bishop, even at this late hour, and at the church door itself to stop the ceremony.

It was late before I finished, and I thought the household was asleep, but just as I was coming to an end I heard my father moving in the room below, and then a sudden impulse came to me, and with a new thought I went downstairs and knocked at his door.

"Who's there?" he cried. "Come in."

He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, shaving before a looking-glass which was propped up against two ledgers. The lather on his upper lip gave his face a fierce if rather grotesque expression.

"Oh, it's you," he said. "Sit down. Got to do this to-night--goodness knows if I'll have time for it in the morning."

I took the seat in the ingle which Father Dan occupied on the night of my birth. The fire had nearly burnt out.

"Thought you were in bed by this time. Guess I should have been in bed myself but for this business. Look there"--he pointed with the handle of his razor to the table littered with papers--"that's a bit of what I've had to do for you. I kind o' think you ought to be grateful to your father, my gel."

I told him he was very kind, and then, very nervously, said:

"But are you sure it's quite right, sir?"

Not catching my meaning he laughed.

"Right?" he said, holding the point of his nose aside between the tips of his left thumb and first finger. "Guess it's about as right as law and wax can make it."

"I don't mean that, sir. I mean. . . ."

"What?" he said, facing round.

Then trembling and stammering I told him. I did not love Lord Raa. Lord Raa did not love me. Therefore I begged him for my sake, for his sake, for everybody's sake (I think I said for my mother's sake also) to postpone our marriage.

At first my father seemed unable to believe his own ears.

"Postpone? Now? After all this money spent? And everything signed and sealed and witnessed!"

"Yes, if you please, sir, because. . . ."

I got no farther, for flinging down his razor my father rose in a towering rage.

"Are you mad? Has somebody been putting the evil eye on you? The greatest match this island has ever seen, and you say postpone--put it off, stop it, that's what you mean. Do you want to make a fool of a man? At the last moment, too. Just when there's nothing left but to go to the High Bailiff and the Church! . . . But I see--I see what it is. It's that young Conrad--he's been writing to you."

I tried to say no, but my father bore me down.

"Don't go to deny it, ma'am. He has been writing to every one--the Bishop, Father Dan, myself even. Denouncing the marriage if you plaze."

My father, in his great excitement, was breaking with withering scorn into his native speech.

"Aw yes, though, denouncing and damning it, they're telling me! Mighty neighbourly of him, I'm sure! Just a neighbour lad without a penny at his back to take all that throuble! If I had known he felt like that about it I might have axed his consent! The imperence, though! The imperence of sin! A father has no rights, it seems! A daughter is a separate being, and all to that! Well, well! Amazing thick, isn't it?"

He was walking up and down the room with his heavy tread, making the floor shake.

"Then that woman in Rome--I wouldn't trust but she has been putting notions into your head, too. All the new-fangled fooleries, I'll go bail. Women and men equal, not a ha'p'orth of difference between them! The blatherskites!"

I was silenced, and I must have covered my face and cried, for after a while my father softened, and touching my shoulder he asked me if a man of sixty-five was not likely to know better than a girl of nineteen what was good for her, and whether I supposed he had not satisfied himself that this marriage was a good thing for me and for him and for everybody.

"Do you think I'm not doing my best for you, gel--my very best?"

I must have made some kind of assent, for he said:

"Then don't moither me any more, and don't let your Aunt Bridget moither me--telling me and telling me what I might have done for her own daughter instead."

At last, with a kind of rough tenderness, he took me by the arm and raised me to my feet.

"There, there, go to bed and get some sleep. We'll have to start off for the high Bailiff's early in the morning."

My will was broken down. I could resist no longer. Without a word more I left him.

Returning to my room I took the letter I had been writing to Father Dan and tore it up piece by piece. As I did so I felt as if I were tearing up a living thing--something of myself, my heart and all that was contained in it.

Then I threw open the window and leant out. I could hear the murmur of the sea. I felt as if it were calling to me, though I could not interpret its voice. The salt air was damp and it refreshed my eyelids.

At length I got into bed, shivering with cold. When I had put out the light I noticed that the moon, which was near the full, had a big yellow ring of luminous vapour around it.

THIRTIETH CHAPTER

My sleep that night was much troubled by dreams. It was the same dream as before, again and again repeated--the dream of frozen regions and of the great ice barrier, and then of the broken pen.

When I awoke in the hazy light of the dawn I thought of what the Pope had said about beginning my wedding-day with penance and communion, so I rose at once to go to church.

The dawn was broadening, but the household was still asleep, only the servants in the kitchen stirring when I stepped through a side door, and set out across the fields.

The dew was thick on the grass, and under the gloom of a heavy sky the day looked cold and cheerless. A wind from the south-east had risen during the night, the sea was white with breakers, and from St. Mary's Rock there came the far-off moaning of surging waves.

The church, too, when I reached it, looked empty and chill. The sacristan in the dim choir was arranging lilies and marguerites about the high altar, and only one poor woman, with a little red and black shawl over her head and shoulders, was kneeling in the side chapel where Father Dan was saying Mass, with a sleepy little boy in clogs to serve him.

The woman was quite young, almost as young as myself, but she was already a widow, having lately lost her husband "at the herrings" somewhere up by Stornoway, where he had gone down in a gale, leaving her with one child, a year old, and another soon to come.

All this she told me the moment I knelt near her. The poor thing seemed to think I ought to have remembered her, for she had been at school with me in the village.

"I'm Bella Quark that was," she whispered. "I married Willie Shimmin of the Lhen, you recollect. It's only a month this morning since he was lost, but it seems like years and years. There isn't nothing in the world like it."

She knew about my marriage, and said she wished me joy, though the world was "so dark and lonely for some." Then she said something about her "lil Willie." She had left him asleep in her cottage on the Curragh, and he might awake and cry before she got back, so she hoped Father Dan wouldn't keep her long.

I was so touched by the poor thing's trouble that I almost forgot my own, and creeping up to her side I put my arm through hers as we knelt together, and that was how the Father found us when he turned to put the holy wafer on our tongues.

The wind must have risen higher while I was in the church, for when I was returning across the fields it lashed my skirts about my legs so that I could scarcely walk. A mist had come down and made a sort of monotonous movement in the mountains where they touched the vague line of the heavy sky.

I should be afraid to say that Nature was still trying to speak to me in her strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a flock of yearlings, which had been sheltering under a hedge, followed me bleating to the last fence, and that the moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock was the last sound I heard as I re-entered the house.

Everything there was running like a mill-race by this time. The servants were flying to and fro, my cousins were calling downstairs in accents of alarm, Aunt Bridget was answering them in tones of vexation, and my father was opening doors with a heavy push and closing them with a clash.

They were all so suddenly pacified when I appeared that it flashed upon me at the moment that they must have thought I had run away.

"Goodness gracious me, girl, where have you been?" said Aunt Bridget.

I told her, and she was beginning to reproach me for not ordering round the carriage, instead of making my boots and stockings damp by traipsing across the grass, when my father said:

"That'll do, that'll do! Change them and take a snack of something. I guess we're due at Holmtown in half an hour."

I ate my breakfast standing, the car was brought round, and by eight o'clock my father and I arrived at the house of the High Bailiff, who had to perform the civil ceremony of my marriage according to the conditions required by law.

The High Bailiff was on one knee before the fire in his office, holding a newspaper in front of it to make it burn.

"Nobody else here yet?" asked my father.

"Traa dy liooar" (time enough), the High Bailiff muttered.

He was an elderly man of intemperate habits who spent his nights at the "Crown and Mitre," and was apparently out of humour at having been brought out of bed so early.

His office was a room of his private house. It had a high desk, a stool and a revolving chair. Placards were pinned on the walls, one over another, and a Testament, with the binding much worn, lay on a table. The place looked half like a doctor's consulting room, and half like a small police court.

Presently Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, came in, rather irritatingly cheerful in that chill atmosphere, and, half an hour late, my intended husband arrived, with his London lawyer and his friend Eastcliff.

My mind was far from clear and I had a sense of seeing things by flashes only, but I remember that I thought Lord Raa was very nervous, and it even occurred to me that early as it was he had been drinking.

"Beastly nuisance, isn't it?" he said to me aside, and then there was something about "this legal fuss and fuddlement."

With the air of a man with a grievance the High Bailiff took a big book out of the desk, and a smaller one off a shelf, and then we sat in a half circle, and the ceremony began.

It was very brief and cold like a matter of business. As far as I can remember it consisted of two declarations which Lord Raa and I made first to the witnesses present and afterwards to each other. One of them stated that we knew of no lawful impediment why we should not be joined together in matrimony, and the other declared that we were there and then so joined.

I remember that I repeated the words automatically, as the High Bailiff in his thick alcoholic voice read them out of the smaller of his books, and that Lord Raa, in tones of obvious impatience, did the same.

Then the High Bailiff opened the bigger of his books, and after writing something in it himself he asked Lord Raa to sign his name, and this being done he asked me also.

"Am I to sign, too?" I asked, vacantly.

"Well, who else do you think?" said Mr. Curphy with a laugh. "Betsy Beauty perhaps, eh?"

"Come, gel, come," said my father, sharply, and then I signed.

I had no longer any will of my own. In this as in everything I did whatever was asked of me.

It was all as dreary and lifeless as an empty house. I can remember that it made no sensible impression upon my heart. My father gave some money (a few shillings I think) to the High Bailiff, who then tore a piece of perforated blue paper out of the bigger of his books and offered it to me, saying:

"This belongs to you."

"To me?" I said.

"Who else?" said Mr. Curphy, who was laughing again, and then something was said by somebody about marriage lines and no one knowing when a wise woman might not want to use them.

The civil ceremony of my marriage was now over, and Lord Raa, who had been very restless, rose to his feet, saying:

"Beastly early drive. Anything in the house to steady one's nerves, High Bailiff?"

The High Bailiff made some reply, at which the men laughed, all except my father. Then they left me and went into another room, the dining-room, and I heard the jingling of glasses and the drinking of healths while I sat before the fire with my foot on the fender and my marriage lines in my hand.

My brain was still numbed. I felt as one might feel if drowned in the sea and descending, without quite losing consciousness, to the depths of its abyss.

I remember I thought that what I had just gone through differed in no respect from the signing of my marriage settlement, except that in the one case I had given my husband rights over my money, my father's money, whereas in this case I seemed to have given him rights over myself.

Otherwise it was all so cold, so drear, so dead, so unaffecting.

The blue paper had slipped out of my hand on to the worn hearthrug when my helpless meditations were interrupted by the thrumming and throbbing of the motor-car outside, and by my father, who was at the office door, saying in his loud, commanding voice:

"Come, gel, guess it's time for you to be back."

Half an hour afterwards I was in my own room at home, and given over to the dressmakers. I was still being moved automatically--a creature without strength or will.

THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER

I have only an indefinite memory of floating vaguely through the sights and sounds of the next two hours--of everybody except myself being wildly excited; of my cousins railing repeatedly from unseen regions of the house: of Aunt Bridget scolding indiscriminately; of the dressmakers chattering without ceasing as they fitted on my wedding dress; of their standing off from me at intervals with cries of delight at the success of their efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel of the drive.

When the dressmakers were done with me I was wearing an ivory satin dress, embroidered in silver, with a coronal of myrtle and orange blossoms under the old Limerick lace of the family veil, as well as a string of pearls and one big diamond of the noble house I was marrying into. I remember they said my black hair shone with a blue lustre against the sparkling gem, and I dare say I looked gay on the outside anyway.

At last I heard a fluttering of silk outside my room, and a running stream of chatter going down the stairs, followed by the banging of carriage doors, and then my father's deep voice, saying:

"Bride ready? Good! Time to go, I guess."

He alone had made no effort to dress himself up, for he was still wearing his every-day serge and his usual heavy boots. There was not even a flower in his button-hole.

We did not speak very much on our way to church, but I found a certain comfort in his big warm presence as we sat together in the carriage with the windows shut, for the rising storm was beginning to frighten me.

"It will be nothing," said my father. "Just a puff of wind and a slant of rain maybe."

The little church was thronged with people. Even the galleries were full of the children from the village school. There was a twittering overhead like that of young birds in a tree, and as I walked up the nave on my father's arm I could not help but hear over the sound of the organ the whispered words of the people in the pews on either side of us.

"Dear heart alive, the straight like her mother she is, bless her!"

"Goodness yes, it's the poor misfortunate mother come to life again."

"Deed, but the daughter's in luck, though."

Lord Raa was waiting for me by the communion rail. He looked yet more nervous than in the morning, and, though he was trying to bear himself with his usual composure, there was (or I thought there was) a certain expression of fear in his face which I had never seen before.

His friend and witness, Mr. Eastcliff, wearing a carnation button-hole, was by his side, and his aunt, Lady Margaret, carrying a sheaf of beautiful white flowers, was standing near.

My own witnesses and bridesmaids, Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, in large hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind me. I could hear the rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the indistinct buzz of their whispered conversation, as well as the more audible reproofs of Aunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk dress and a bonnet like a half moon, was telling them to be silent and to look placid.

At the next moment I was conscious that a bell had been rung in the chancel; that the organ had stopped; that the coughing and hemming in the church had ceased; that somebody was saying "Stand here, my lord"; that Lord Raa, with a nervous laugh, was asking "Here?" and taking a place by my side; that the lighted altar, laden with flowers, was in front of me; and that the Bishop in his vestments, Father Dan in his surplice and white stole, and a clerk carrying a book and a vessel of holy water were beginning the service.

Surely never was there a sadder ceremony. Never did any girl under similar circumstances feel a more vivid presentiment of the pains and penalties that follow on a forced and ill-assorted marriage. And yet there came to me in the course of the service such a startling change of thought as wiped out for a while all my sadness, made me forget the compulsion that had been put upon me, and lifted me into a realm of spiritual ecstasy.

The Bishop began with a short litany which asked God's blessing on the ceremony which was to join together two of His children in the bonds of holy wedlock. While that was going on I was conscious of nothing except the howling of the wind about the church windows and the far-off tolling of the bell on St. Mary's Rock--nothing but this and a voice within me which seemed to say again and again, "I don't love him! I don't love him!"

But hardly had the actual ceremony commenced when I began to be overawed by the solemnity and divine power of the service, and by the sense of God leaning over my littleness and guiding me according to His will.

What did it matter how unworthy were the preparations that had led up to this marriage if God was making it? God makes all marriages that are blessed by His Church, and therefore He overrules to His own good ends all human impulses, however sordid or selfish they may be.

After that thought came to me nothing else seemed to matter, and nothing, however jarring or incongruous, was able to lower the exaltation of my spirit.

But the service, which had this effect upon me, appeared to have an exactly opposite effect on Lord Raa. His nervousness increased visibly, though he did his best to conceal it by a lightness of manner that sometimes looked like derision.

Thus when the Bishop stepped down to us and said:

"James Charles Munster, wilt thou take Mary here present for thy lawful wife, according to the rite of our holy Mother the Church," my husband halted and stammered over his answer, saying beneath his breath, "I thought I was a heretic."

But when the corresponding question was put to me, and Father Dan thinking I must be nervous, leaned over me and whispered, "Don't worry, child, take your time," I replied a loud, clear, unfaltering voice:

"I will."

And again, when my husband had to put the ring and the gold and silver on the salver (he fumbled and dropped them as he did so, and fumbled and dropped them a second time when he had to take them up after they had been blessed, laughing too audibly at his own awkwardness), and then repeat after the Bishop:

"With this ring I thee wed; this gold and silver I thee give; with my body I thee worship; and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," he tendered the ring slowly and with an obvious effort.

But I took it without trembling, because I was thinking that, in spite of all I had heard of his ways of life, this solemn and sacred sacrament made him mine and no one else's.

It is all very mysterious; I cannot account for it; I only know it was so, and that, everything considered, it was perhaps the strangest fact of all my life.

I remember that more than once during the ceremony Father Dan spoke to me softly and caressingly, as if to a child, but I felt no need of his comforting, for my strength was from a higher source.

I also remember that it was afterwards said that all through the ceremony the eyes of the newly-wedded couple seemed sedulously to shun each other, but if I did not look at my husband it was because my marriage was like a prayer to me, carrying me back, with its sense of purity and sanctity, to the little sunlit church in Rome where Mildred Bankes had taken her vows.

After the marriage service there was Nuptial Mass and Benediction (special dispensation from Rome), and that raised to a still higher pitch the spiritual exaltation which sustained me.