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The Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 1. My Girlhood - Chapter 17 |
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_ FIRST PART. MY GIRLHOOD SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat collar turned up, waiting for me on the platform. I could see that he was greatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to maintain his composure. "Now don't worry, my child, don't worry," he said. "It will be all ri. . . . But how well you are looking! And how you have grown! And how glad your poor mother will be to see you!" I tried to ask how she was. "Is she . . ." "Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's hope." We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwater at seven the same evening. There we took train, for railways were running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be green with grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red with fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth. At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting for us and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whispered question of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered that my mother's condition was unchanged. We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of new electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for the carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw. I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen, and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother at her window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason--to see if the blinds were down. Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown more and more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how my mother was now, poor thing, she answered: "Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this trouble and expense has been wasted." As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quiet step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to my mother's bedroom. I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door. I remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought. I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on a brass nail at the pillow end. I remember my little cot which still stood in the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as a child, and even some of the toys I had played with. A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me as I entered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at length I did see her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and small as to be almost hidden in the big white bed. Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and Aunt Bridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and had a pen in his ear, I remember. Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the hand and led me to my mother's side, where stooping over her, and making his voice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into a long tunnel, he said: "My daughter! My daughter! Here is our little Mary. She has come home to see you." Never shall I forget what followed. First, my mother's long lashes parted and she looked at me with a dazed expression as if still in a sort of dream. Then her big eyes began to blaze like torches in dark hollows, and then (though they had thought her strength was gone and her voice would never be heard again) she raised herself in her bed, stretched out her arms to me, and cried in loud strong tones: "Mally veen! My Mally veen!" How long I lay with my arms about my mother, and my mother's arms about me I do not know. I only know that over my head I heard Father Dan saying, as if speaking to a child: "You are happy now, are you not?" "Yes, yes, I am happy now," my mother answered. "You have everything you want?" "Everything--everything!" Then came my father's voice, saying: "Well, you've got your girl, Isabel. You wanted her, so we sent for her, and here she is." "You have been very good to me, Daniel," said my mother, who was kissing my forehead and crying in her joy. When I raised my head I found Father Dan in great excitement. "Did you see that then?" he was saying to Doctor Conrad. "I would have gone on my knees all the way to Blackwater to see it." "I couldn't have believed it possible," the Doctor replied. "Ah, what children we are, entirely. God confounds all our reckoning. We can't count with His miracles. And the greatest of all miracles is a mother's love for her child." "Let us leave her now, though," said the Doctor. "She's like herself again, but still . . ." "Yes, let us leave them together," whispered Father Dan, and having swept everybody out before him (I thought Aunt Bridget went away ashamed) he stepped off himself on tiptoe, as if treading on holy ground. Then my mother, who was holding my hand and sometimes putting it to her lips, said: "Tell me everything that has happened." As soon as my little tongue was loosed I told her all about my life at the Convent--about the Reverend Mother and the nuns and the novices and the girls (all except Sister Angela and Alma) and the singing of the hymn to the Virgin--talking on and on and on, without observing that, after a while, my mother's eyes had closed again, and that her hand had become cold and moist. At length she said: "Is it getting dark, Mary?" I told her it was night and the lamp was burning. "Is it going out then?" she asked, and when I answered that it was not she did not seem to hear, so I stopped talking, and for some time there was silence in which I heard nothing but the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the barking of a sheep dog a long way off, and the husky breathing in my mother's throat. I was beginning to be afraid when the nurse returned. She was going to speak quite cheerfully, but after a glance at my mother she went out quickly and came back in a moment with Doctor Conrad and Father Dan. I heard the doctor say something about a change, whereupon Father Dan hurried away, and in a moment there was much confusion. The nurse spoke of taking me to another room but the doctor said: "No, our little woman will be brave," and then leading me aside he whispered that God was sending for my mother and I must be quiet and not cry. Partly undressing I climbed into my cot and lay still for the next half hour, while the doctor held his hand on my mother's pulse and the nurse spread a linen cloth over a table and put four or five lighted candles on it. I remember that I was thinking that if "God sending for my mother" meant that she was to be put into a box and buried under the ground it was terrible and cruel, and perhaps if I prayed to our Lady He would not find it in His heart to do so. I was trying to do this, beginning under my breath, "O Holy Virgin, thou art so lovely, thou art so gracious . . ." when the nurse said: "Here they are back again." Then I heard footsteps outside, and going to the window I saw a sight not unlike that which I had seen on the night of the Waits. A group of men were coming towards the house, with Father Dan in the middle of them. Father Dan, with his coat hung over his arms like a cloak, was carrying something white in both hands, and the men were carrying torches to light him on his way. I knew what it was--it was the Blessed Sacrament, which they were bringing to my mother, and when Father Dan had come into the room, saying "Peace be to this house," and laid a little white box on the table, and thrown off his coat, he was wearing his priest's vestments underneath. Then the whole of my father's household--all except my father himself--came into my mother's room, including Aunt Bridget, who sat with folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and the servants, who knelt in a group by the door. Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after she had opened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice seemed to be choked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were suffering, and sometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the priest were inspiring him. After Communion he gave my mother Extreme Unction--anointing the sweet eyes which had seen no evil, the dear lips which had uttered no wrong, and the feet which had walked in the ways of God. All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of a church--no sound within except my father's measured tread in the room below, and none without except the muffled murmur which the sea makes when it is far away and going out. When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after asking for me and being told I was in the cot, she said: "You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right now." A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more, and then she called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me and I lay with my face hidden in her neck. What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of, almost too sacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of yesterday, while other events of my life have floated away to the ocean of things that are forgotten and lost. "Listen, darling," she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she told me she had heard all I had said about the Convent, and wondered if I would not like to live there always, becoming one of the good and holy nuns. I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say how hard the world was to a woman and how difficult she had found it. "Not that your father has been to blame--you must never think that, Mary, yet still . . ." But tears from her tender heart were stealing down her face and she had to stop. Even yet I had not realised all that the solemn time foreboded, for I said something about staying with my mother; and then in her sweet voice, she told me nervously, breaking the news to me gently, that she was going to leave me, that she was going to heaven, but she would think of me when she was there, and if God permitted she would watch over me, or, if that might not be, she would ask our Lady to do so. "So you see we shall never be parted, never really. We shall always be together. Something tells me that wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I shall know all about it." This comforted me, and I think it comforted my mother also, though God knows if it would have done so, if, with her dying eyes, she could have seen what was waiting for her child. It fills my heart brimful to think of what happened next. She told me to say a _De Profundis_ for her sometimes, and to think of her when I sang the hymn to the Virgin. Then she kissed me and told me to go to sleep, saying she was going to sleep too, and if it should prove to be the eternal sleep, it would be only like going to sleep at night and awaking in the morning, and then we should be together again, and "the time between would not seem long." "So good-night, darling, and God bless you," she said. And as well as I could I answered her "Good-night!" * * * * * When I awoke from the profound slumber of childhood it was noon of the next day and the sun was shining. Doctor Conrad was lifting me out of bed, and Father Dan, who had just thrown open the window, was saying in a tremulous voice: "Your dear mother has gone to God." I began to cry, but he checked me and said: "Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful Paradise after all her suffering. Let her go!" So I lost her, my mother, my saint, my angel. It was Easter Eve, and the church bells were ringing the Gloria. _ |
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