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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 7. I Am Found - Chapter 108 |
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_ SEVENTH PART. I AM FOUND 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.
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] _ |
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