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AN ISLE IN THE WATER
An
Isle in the Water
BY
KATHARINE TYNAN
(Mrs. H.A. Hinkson)
LONDON: ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO.
1896
TO
JANE BARLOW
THESE UNWORTHY PRESENTS
CONTENTS
PAGE
1. THE FIRST WIFE 1
2. THE STORY OF FATHER ANTHONY O'TOOLE 12
3. THE UNLAWFUL MOTHER 28
4. A RICH WOMAN 49
5. HOW MARY CAME HOME 67
6. MAURYEEN 84
7. A WRESTLING 102
8. THE SEA'S DEAD 112
9. KATIE 122
10. THE DEATH SPANCEL 136
11. A SOLITARY 148
12. THE MAN WHO WAS HANGED 168
13. A PRODIGAL SON 184
14. CHANGING THE NURSERIES 201
15. THE FIELDS OF MY CHILDHOOD 209
I
THE FIRST WIFE
The dead woman had lain six years in her grave, and the new wife had
reigned five of them in her stead. Her triumph over her dead rival was
well-nigh complete. She had nearly ousted her memory from her
husband's heart. She had given him an heir for his name and estate,
and, lest the bonny boy should fail, there was a little brother
creeping on the nursery floor, and another child stirring beneath her
heart. The twisted yew before the door, which was heavily buttressed
because the legend ran that when it died the family should die out
with it, had taken another lease of life, and sent out one spring
green shoots on boughs long barren. The old servants had well-nigh
forgotten the pale mistress who reigned one short year; and in the
fishing village the lavish benefactions of the reigning lady had quite
extinguished the memory of the tender voice and gentle words of the
woman whose place she filled. A new era of prosperity had come to the
Island and the race that long had ruled it.
Under a high, stately window of the ruined Abbey was the dead wife's
grave. In the year of his bereavement, before the beautiful brilliant
cousin of his dead Alison came and seized on his life, the widower had
spent days and nights of stony despair standing by her grave. She had
died to give him an heir to his name, and her sacrifice had been vain,
for the boy came into the world dead, and lay on her breast in the
coffin. Now for years he had not visited the place: the last wreaths
of his mourning for her had been washed into earth and dust long ago,
and the grave was neglected. The fisherwives whispered that a
despairing widower is soonest comforted; and in that haunted Island of
ghosts and omens there were those who said that they had met the dead
woman gliding at night along the quay under the Abbey walls, with the
shape of a child gathered within her shadowy arms. People avoided the
quay at night therefore, and no tale of the ghost ever came to the
ears of Alison's husband.
His new wife held him indeed in close keeping. In the first days of
his remarriage the servants in the house had whispered that there had
been ill blood over the man between the two women, so strenuously did
the second wife labour to uproot any trace of the first. The cradle
that had been prepared for the young heir was flung to a fishergirl
expecting her base-born baby: the small garments into which Alison had
sewn her tears with the stitches went the same road. There was many an
honest wife might have had the things, but that would not have pleased
the grim humour of the second wife towards the woman she had
supplanted.
Everything that had been Alison's was destroyed or hidden away. Her
rooms were changed out of all memory of her. There was nothing,
nothing in the house to recall to her widower her gentleness, or her
face as he had last seen it, snow-pale and pure between the long
ashen-fair strands of her hair. He never came upon anything that could
give him a tender stab with the thought of her. So she was forgotten,
and the man was happy with his children and his beautiful passionate
wife, and the constant tenderness with which she surrounded every hour
of his life.
Little by little she had won over all who had cause to love the dead
woman,--all human creatures, that is to say: a dog was more faithful
and had resisted her. Alison's dog was a terrier, old, shaggy and
blear-eyed: he had been young with his dead mistress, and had seemed
to grow old when she died. He had fretted incessantly during that year
of her husband's widowhood, whimpering and moaning about the house
like a distraught creature, and following the man in a heavy
melancholy when he made his pilgrimages to the grave. He continued
those pilgrimages after the man had forgotten, but the heavy iron gate
of the Abbey clanged in his face, and since he could not reach the
grave his visits grew fewer and fewer. But he had not forgotten.
The new mistress had put out all her fascinations to win the dog too,
for it seemed that while any living creature clung to the dead woman's
memory her triumph was not complete. But the dog, amenable to every
one else, was savage to her. All her soft overtures were received with
snarling, and an uncovering of the strong white teeth that was
dangerous. The woman was not without a heart, except for the dead, and
the misery of the dog moved her--his restlessness, his whining, the
channels that tears had worn under his faithful eyes. She would have
liked to take him up in her arms and comfort him; but once when her
pity moved her to attempt it, the dog ran at her ravening. The husband
cried out: 'Has he hurt you, my Love?' and was for stringing him up.
But some compunction stirred in her, and she saved him from the rope,
though she made no more attempts to conciliate him.
After that the dog disappeared from the warm living-rooms, where he
had been used to stretch on the rug before the leaping wood-fires. It
was a cold and stormy autumn, with many shipwrecks, and mourning in
the village for drowned husbands and sons, whose little fishing boats
had been sucked into the boiling surges. The roar of the wind and the
roar of the waves made a perpetual tumult in the air, and the creaking
and lashing of the forest trees aided the wild confusion. There were
nights when the crested battalions of the waves stormed the hill-sides
and foamed over the Abbey graves, and weltered about the hearthstones
of the high-perched fishing village. When there was not storm there
was bitter black frost.
The old house had attics in the gables, seldom visited. You went up
from the inhabited portions by a corkscrew staircase, steep as a
ladder. The servants did not like the attics. There were creaking
footsteps on the floors at night, and sometimes the slamming of a door
or the stealthy opening of a window. They complained that locked doors
up there flew open, and bolted windows were found unbolted. In storm
the wind keened like a banshee, and one bright snowy morning a
housemaid, who had business there, found a slender wet footprint on
the floor as of some one who had come barefoot through the snow;--and
fled down shrieking.
In one of the attics stood a great hasped chest, wherein the dead
woman's dresses were mouldering. The chest was locked, and was likely
to remain so for long, for the new mistress had flung away the key.
From the high attic windows there was a glorious view of sea and land,
of the red sandstone valleys where the deer were feeding, of the black
tossing woods, of the roan bulls grazing quietly in the park, and far
beyond, of the sea, and the fishing fleet, and in the distance the
smoke of a passing steamer. But none observed that view. There was not
a servant in the house who would lean from the casement without
expecting the touch of a clay-cold finger on her shoulder. Any whose
business brought them to the attic looked in the corners warily, while
they stayed, but the servants did not like to go there alone. They
said the room smelt strangely of earth, and that the air struck with
an insidious chill: and a gamekeeper being in full view of the attic
window one night declared that from the window came a faint moving
glow, and that a wavering shadow moved in the room.
It was in this cold attic the dog took up his abode. He followed a
servant up there one morning, and broke out into an excited whimpering
when he came near the chest. After a while of sniffing and rubbing
against it he established himself upon it with his nose on his paws.
Afterwards he refused to leave it. Finally the servants gave up the
attempt to coax him back into the world, and with a compunctious pity
they spread an old rug for him on the chest, and fed him faithfully
every day. The master never inquired for him: he was glad to have the
brute out of his sight: the mistress heard of the fancy which
possessed him, and said nothing: she had given up thinking to win him
over. So he grew quite old and grizzled, and half blind as summers and
winters passed by. It grew a superstition with the servants to take
care of him, and with them on their daily visits he was so
affectionate and caressing as to recall the days in which some of them
remembered him when his mistress lived, and he was a happy dog, as
good at fighting and rat-hunting and weasel-catching as any dog in the
Island.
But every night as twelve o'clock struck the dog came down the attic
stairs. He was suddenly alert and cheerful, and trotted by an
invisible gown. Some said you could hear the faint rustle of silk
lapping from stair to stair, and the dog would sometimes bark sharply
as in his days of puppyhood, and leap up to lick a hand of air. The
servants would shut their doors as they heard the patter of the dog's
feet coming, and his sudden bark. They were thrilled with a
superstitious awe, but they were not afraid the ghost would harm them.
They remembered how just, how gentle, how pure the dead woman had
been. They whispered that she might well be dreeing this purgatory of
returning to her dispossessed house for another's sake, not her own.
Husband and wife were nearly always in their own room when she
passed. She went everywhere looking to the fastenings of the house,
trying every door and window as she had done in the old days, when her
husband declared the old place was only precious because it held her.
Presently the servants came to look on her guardianship of the house
as holy, for one night some careless person had left a light burning
where the wind blew the curtains about, and they took fire, and were
extinguished, by whom none knew; but in the morning there was the
charred curtain, and Molly, the kitchenmaid, confessed with tears how
she had forgotten the lighted candle.
The husband was the last of all to hear of these strange doings, for
the new wife took care that they should never be about the house at
midnight. But one night as he lay in bed he had forgotten something
and asked her to fetch it from below. She looked at him with a disdain
out of the mists of her black hair, which she was combing to her knee.
Perhaps for a minute she resented his unfaithfulness to the dead.
'No,' she said, with deliberation, 'not till that dog and his
companion pass.' She flung the door open, and looked half with fear,
half with defiance, at the black void outside. There was the patter of
the dog's feet coming down the stairs swiftly. The man lifted himself
on his elbow and listened. Side by side with the dog's feet came the
swish, swish of a silken gown on the stairs. He looked a wild-eyed
inquiry at his second wife. She slammed the door to before she
answered him. 'It has been _so_ for years,' she said; 'every one knew
but you. She has not forgotten as easily as you have.'
* * * * *
One day the dog died, worn out with age. After that they heard the
ghost no longer. Perhaps her purgatory of seeing the second wife in
her place was completed, and she was fit for Paradise, or her
suffering had sufficed to win another's pardon. From that time the new
wife reigned without a rival, living or dead, near her throne.
II
THE STORY OF FATHER ANTHONY O'TOOLE
On the wall of the Island Chapel there is a tablet which strangers
read curiously. The inscription runs:
FATHER ANTHONY O'TOOLE
FOR THIRTY YEARS THE SHEPHERD OF
HIS FLOCK
_Died 18th December 1812_
Aged 80 years.
'He will avenge the blood of his servants, and will be
merciful unto his land, and to his people.'
Many a time has a summer visitor asked me the meaning of the Old
Testament words on the memorial tablet of a life that in all
probability passed so quietly.
Any child in the Island will tell you the story of Father Anthony
O'Toole. Here and there an old man or woman will remember to have seen
him and will describe him--tall despite his great age, with the frost
on his head but never in his heart, stepping down the cobbles of the
village street leaning on his gold-headed cane, and greeting his
spiritual children with such a courtesy as had once been well in place
at Versailles or the Little Trianon. Plainly he never ceased to be the
finest of fine gentlemen, though a less inbred courtesy might well
rust in the isolation of thirty years. Yet he seems to have been no
less the humblest and simplest of priests. Old Peter Devine will tell
you his childish memory of the old priest sitting by the turf fire in
the fisherman's cottage, listening to the eternal complaint of the
winds and waters that had destroyed the fishing and washed the
potato-gardens out to sea, and pausing in his words of counsel and
sympathy to take delicately a pinch of the finest snuff, snuff that
had never bemeaned itself by paying duty to King George.
But that was in the quite peaceful days, when the country over there
beyond the shallow water lay in the apathy of exhaustion--helpless and
hopeless. That was years after Father Anthony had flashed out as a man
of war in the midst of his quiet pastoral days, and like any Old
Testament hero had taken the sword and smitten his enemies in the name
of the Lord.
Father Anthony was the grandson of one of those Irish soldiers of
fortune who, after the downfall of the Jacobite cause in Ireland, had
taken service in the French and Austrian armies. In Ireland they
called them the Wild Geese. He had risen to high honours in the armies
of King Louis, and had been wounded at Malplaquet. The son followed in
his father's footsteps and was among the slain at Fontenoy. Father
Anthony, too, became a soldier and saw service at Minden, and carried
away from it a wound in the thigh which made necessary the use of that
gold-headed cane. They said that, soldier as he was, he was a fine
courtier in his day. One could well believe it looking at him in his
old age. From his father he had inherited the dashing bravery and gay
wit of which even yet he carried traces. From his French mother he had
the delicate courtesy and _finesse_ which would be well in place in
the atmosphere of a court.
However, in full prime of manhood and reputation, Father Anthony, for
some reason or other, shook the dust of courts off his feet, and
became a humble aspirant after the priesthood at the missionary
College of St. Omer. He had always a great desire to be sent to the
land of his fathers, the land of faith and hope, of which he had heard
from many an Irish refugee, and in due time his desire was fulfilled.
He reached the Island one wintry day, flung up out of the teeth of
storms, and was in the Island thirty years, till the _reveille_ of his
Master called him to the muster of the Heavenly host.
Father Anthony seems to have been innocently ready to talk over his
days of fighting. He was not at all averse from fighting his battles
over again for these simple children of his who were every day in
battle with the elements and death. Peter Devine remembers to have
squatted, burning his shins by the turf fire, and watching with
fascination the lines in the ashes which represented the entrenchments
and the guns, and the troops of King Frederick and the French line, as
Father Anthony played the war-game for old Corney Devine, whose
grass-grown grave is under the gable of the Island Chapel.
Now and again a fisherman was admitted by special favour to look upon
the magnificent clothing which Father Anthony had worn as a colonel of
French Horse. The things were laid by in lavender as a bride might
keep her wedding-dress. There were the gold-laced coat and the
breeches with the sword-slash in them, the sash, the belt, the plumed
hat, the high boots, the pistols, and glittering among them all, the
sword. That chest of Father Anthony's and its contents were something
of a fairy tale to the boys of the Island, and each of them dreamt of
a day when he too might behold them. The chest, securely locked and
clamped, stood in the sacristy; and Father Anthony would have seen
nothing incongruous in its neighbourhood to the sacred vessels and
vestments. He generally displayed the things when he had been talking
over old fighting days, to the Island men mostly, but occasionally to
a French captain, who with a cargo, often contraband, or wines and
cigars, would run into the Island harbour for shelter. Then there were
courtesies given and exchanged; and Father Anthony's guest at parting
would make an offering of light wines, much of which found its way to
sick and infirm Island men and women in the days that followed.
Father Anthony had been many placid years on the Island when there
began to be rumours of trouble on the mainland. Just at first the
United Irish Society had been quite the fashion, and held no more
rebellious than the great volunteer movement of a dozen years earlier.
But as time went by things became more serious. Moderate and fearful
men fell away from the Society, and the union between Northern
Protestants and Southern Catholics, which had been a matter of much
concern to the Government of the day, was met by a policy of goading
the leaders on to rebellion. By and by this and that idol of the
populace was flung into prison. Wolfe Tone was in France, praying,
storming, commanding, forcing an expedition to act in unison with a
rising on Irish soil. Father Anthony was excited in these days. The
France of the Republic was not his France, and the stain of the blood
of the Lord's Anointed was upon her, but for all that the news of the
expedition from Brest set his blood coursing so rapidly and his pulses
beating, that he was fain to calm with much praying the old turbulent
spirit of war which possessed him.
Many of the young fishermen had left the Island and were on the
mainland, drilling in secrecy. There were few left save old men and
women and children when the blow fell. The Government, abundantly
informed of what went on in the councils of the United Irishmen, knew
the moment to strike, and took it. The rebellion broke out in various
parts of the country, but already the leaders were in prison. Calamity
followed calamity. Heroic courage availed nothing. In a short time
Wolfe Tone lay dead in the Provost-Marshal's prison of Dublin; and
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was dying of his wounds. In Dublin,
dragoonings, hangings, pitch-capping and flogging set up a reign of
terror. Out of the first sudden silence terrible tidings came to the
Island.
At that time there was no communication with the mainland except by
the fishermen's boats or at low water. The Island was very much out of
the world; and the echoes of what went on in the world came vaguely as
from a distance to the ears of the Island people. They were like
enough to be safe, though there was blood and fire and torture on the
mainland. They were all old and helpless people, and they might well
be safe from the soldiery. There was no yeomanry corps within many
miles of the Island, and it was the yeomanry, tales of whose doings
made the Islanders' blood run cold. Not the foreign soldiers--oh no,
they were often merciful, and found this kind of warfare bitterly
distasteful. But it might well be that the yeomanry, being so busy,
would never think of the Island.
Father Anthony prayed that it might be so, and the elements conspired
to help him. There were many storms and high tides that set the Island
riding in safety. Father Anthony went up and down comforting those
whose husbands, sons, and brothers were in the Inferno over yonder.
The roses in his old cheeks withered, and his blue eyes were faded
with many tears for his country and his people. He prayed incessantly
that the agony of the land might cease, and that his own most helpless
flock might be protected from the butchery that had been the fate of
many as innocent and helpless.
The little church of gray stone stands as the vanguard of the village,
a little nearer to the mainland, and the spit of sand that runs out
towards it. You ascend to it by a hill, and a wide stretch of green
sward lies before the door. The gray stone presbytery joins the church
and communicates with it. A ragged boreen, or bit of lane, between
rough stone walls runs zigzag from the gate, ever open, that leads to
the church, and wanders away to the left to the village on the rocks
above the sea. Everything is just the same to-day as on that morning
when Father Anthony, looking across to the mainland from the high
gable window of his bedroom, saw on the sands something that made him
dash the tears from his old eyes, and go hastily in search of the
telescope which had been a present from one of those wandering
sea-captains.
As he set his glass to his eye that morning, the lassitude of age and
grief seemed to have left him. For a few minutes he gazed at the
objects crossing the sands--for it was low water--in an attitude tense
and eager. At last he lowered the glass and closed it. He had seen
enough. Four yeomen on their horses were crossing to the island.
He was alone in the house, and as he bustled downstairs and made door
and windows fast, he was rejoiced it should be so. Down below the
village was calm and quiet. The morning had a touch of spring, and the
water was lazily lapping against the sands. The people were within
doors,--of that he was pretty well assured--for the Island was in a
state of terror and depression. There was no sign of life down there
except now and again the barking of a dog or the cackling of a hen.
Unconsciously the little homes waited the death and outrage that were
coming to them as fast as four strong horses could carry them.
'Strengthen thou mine arm,' cried Father Anthony aloud, 'that the
wicked prevail not! Keep thou thy sheep that thou hast confided to my
keeping. Lo! the wolves are upon them!' and as he spoke his voice rang
out through the silent house. The fire of battle was in his eyes, his
nostrils smelt blood, and the man seemed exalted beyond his natural
size. Father Anthony went swiftly and barred his church doors, and
then turned into the presbytery. He flashed his sword till it caught
the light and gleamed and glanced. 'For this, for this hour, friend,'
he said, 'I have polished thee and kept thee keen. Hail, sword of the
justice of God!'
There came a thundering at the oaken door of the church. 'Open, son of
Belial!' cried a coarse voice, and then there followed a shower of
blasphemies. The men had lit down from their horses, which they had
picketed below, and had come on foot, vomiting oaths, to the church
door. Father Anthony took down the fastenings one by one. Before he
removed the last he looked towards the little altar. 'Now,' he said,
'defend Thyself, all-powerful!' and saying, he let the bar fall.
The door swung open so suddenly that three of the men fell back. The
fourth, who had been calling his blasphemies through the keyhole of
the door, remained yet on his knees. In the doorway, where they had
looked to find an infirm old man, stood a French colonel in his battle
array, the gleaming sword in his hand. The apparition was so sudden,
so unexpected, that they stood for the moment terror-stricken. Did
they think it something supernatural? as well they might, for to their
astonished eyes the splendid martial figure seemed to grow and grow,
and fill the doorway. Or perhaps they thought they had fallen in an
ambush.
Before they could recover, the sword swung in air, and the head of the
fellow kneeling rolled on the threshold of the church. The others
turned and fled. One man fell, the others with a curse stumbled over
him, recovered themselves, and sped on. Father Anthony, as you might
spit a cockroach with a long pin, drove his sword in the fallen man's
back and left it quivering. The dying scream rang in his ears as he
drew his pistols. He muttered to himself: 'If one be spared he win
return with seven worse devils. No! they must die that the innocent
may go safe,' and on the track of the flying wretches, he shot one in
the head as he ran, and the other he pierced, as he would have
dragged himself into the stirrups.
In the broad sunlight, the villagers, alarmed by the sound of
shooting, came timidly creeping towards the presbytery to see if harm
had befallen the priest, and found Father Anthony standing on the
bloody green sward wiping his sword and looking about him at the dead
men. The fury of battle had gone out of his face, and he looked gentle
as ever, but greatly troubled. 'It had to be,' he said, 'though, God
knows, I would have spared them to repent of their sins.'
'Take them,' he said, 'to the Devil's Chimney and drop them down, so
that if their comrades come seeking them there may be no trace of
them.' The Devil's Chimney is a strange, natural _oubliette_ of the
Island, whose depth none has fathomed, though far below you may hear a
subterranean waterfall roaring.
One of the dead men's horses set up a frightened whinnying. 'But the
poor beasts,' said Father Anthony, who had ever a kindness for
animals, 'they must want for nothing. Stable them in M'Ora's Cave
till the trouble goes by, and see that they are well fed and watered.'
An hour later, except for some disturbance of the grass, you would
have come upon no trace of these happenings. I have never heard that
they cast any shade upon Father Anthony's spirit, or that he was less
serene and cheerful when peace had come back than he had been before.
No hue and cry after the dead yeomen ever came to the Island, and the
troubles of '98 spent themselves without crossing again from the
mainland. After a time, when peace was restored, the yeomen's horses
were used for drawing the Island fish to the market, or for carrying
loads of seaweed to the potatoes, and many other purposes for which
human labour had hitherto served.
But Father Anthony O'Toole was dead many and many a year before that
tablet was set up to his memory. And the strange thing was that Mr.
Hill, the rector, who, having no flock to speak of, is pretty free to
devote himself to the antiquities of the Island, his favourite study,
was a prime mover in this commemoration of Father Anthony O'Toole,
and himself selected the text to go upon the tablet.
In a certain Wicklow country-house an O'Toole of this day will display
to you, as they display the dead hand of a martyr in a reliquary, the
uniform, the sword and pistols, the feathered hat and the riding
boots, of Father Anthony O'Toole.
III
THE UNLAWFUL MOTHER
In the Island the standard of purity is an extraordinarily high one,
and it is almost unheard of that a woman should fall away from it.
Purity is the unquestioned prerogative of every Island girl or woman,
and it only comes to them as a vague far-off horror in an unknown
world that there are places under the sun and the stars where such is
not the case. The punishment is appalling in the very few cases where
sin has lifted its head amongst these austere people. The lepers' hut
of old was no such living death of isolation as surrounds an Island
girl who has smirched her good name. Henceforth there is an atmosphere
about her that never lifts--of horror for some, of tragedy for
others, according to their temperament. There she stands lonely for
all her days, with the seal set upon her that can never be broken, the
consecration of an awful and tragic destiny.
I knew of such an one who was little more than a child when this
horror befell her. She has dark blue eyes and thick black lashes, and
very white skin. The soft dark hair comes low on her white forehead.
With a gaily-coloured shawl covering her head, and drawn across her
chin, as they wear it in the Island, she looks, or looked when I last
saw her, a hidden, gliding image of modesty. And despite that sin of
the past she is modest. It was the ignorant sin of a child, and out of
the days of horror and wrath that followed--her purging--she brought
only the maternity that burns like a white flame in her. The virtuous
were more wroth against her in old days that she carried her maternity
so proudly. Why, not the most honourable and cherished of the young
Island mothers dandled her child with such pride. No mother of a young
earl could have stepped lighter, and held her head higher, than
Maggie when she came down the fishing street, spurning the very
stones, as it seemed, so lightly she went with the baby wrapped in her
shawl. She did not seem to notice that some of the kindly neighbours
stepped aside, or that here and there a woman pulled her little
daughter within doors, out of the path of the unlawful mother. Those
little pink fingers pushed away shame and contempt. The child was her
world.
She was the daughter of a fisherman who died of a chest complaint soon
after she was born. Her mother still lives, a hard-featured honest old
woman, with a network of fine lines about her puckered eyes. Her hair
went quite white the year her daughter's child was born, but I
remember it dark and abundant with only a silver thread glistening
here and there. She has grown taciturn too; she was talkative enough
in the old days when I was a child in the Island, and, often and
often, came clattering in by the half-door to shelter from a shower,
and sat till fine weather on a stool by the turf ashes, gravely
discussing the fishing and the prospects of pigs and young fowl that
season.
There are three sons, but Jim was married and doing for himself before
the trouble befell the family. Tom and Larry were at home, Tom, gentle
and slow-spoken, employed about the Hall gardens. Larry, a fisherman
like his father before him. Both were deeply attached to their young
sister, and had been used to pet and care for her from her cradle.
There is yet a tradition in the island of that terrible time when
Maggie's mother realised the disgrace her daughter had brought on an
honest name. There had been a horrified whisper in the Island for some
time before, a surmise daily growing more certain, an awe-stricken
compassion for the honest people who never suspected the ghastly
shadow about to cross their threshold. People had been slow to accept
this solution of Maggie's pining and weakness. This one had suggested
herb-tea, and that one had offered to accompany Maggie to see the
dispensary doctor who came over from Breagh every Tuesday. But Maggie
accepted none of their offices, only withdrew herself more and more in
a sick horror of herself and life, and roamed about the cliffs where
but the gulls and the little wild Island cattle looked on at her
restless misery.
Her mother was half-fretted and half impatient of her daughter's
ailing. She was a very strong woman herself, and except for a pain in
the side which had troubled her of late, she had never known a day of
megrims. She listened chafing to the neighbours' advice--and every one
of them had their nostrum--and heeded none of them. She had an idea
herself that the girl's sickness was imaginary and could be thrown off
if she willed it. When the neighbours all at once ceased offering her
advice and sympathy she felt it a distinct relief. She had not the
remotest idea that she was become the centre of an awe-stricken
sympathy, that her little world had fallen back and stood gaping at
her and hers as they might at one abnormally stricken: if their
gabble ceased very suddenly and no more idlers came in for a chat by
the fireside she was not the one to fret; she had always plenty to do
without idle women hindering her, and, now the girl had her sick fit
on her, all the work fell to the mother's share.
The girl's time was upon her before the mother guessed at the blinding
and awful truth. She was a proud, stern, old woman, come of a race
strong in rectitude, and she would scarcely have believed an angel if
one had come to testify to her daughter's dishonour. But the time came
when it could no longer be hidden, when the birth-pains were on the
wretched girl, and in the quietness of the winter night, her sin stood
forth revealed.
Some merciful paralysis stiffened the mother's lips when she would
have cursed her daughter. She lifted up her voice indeed to curse, but
it went from her; her lips jabbered helplessly; over her face came a
bluish-gray shade, and she fell in a chair huddled with one hand
pressed against her side.
The two men came in on this ghastly scene. The girl was crouched on
the floor with her face hidden, shrinking to the earth from the
terrible words she expected to hear. The men lifted the sister to her
bed in the little room. They forced some spirit between their mother's
lips, and in a few minutes the livid dark shade began to pass from her
face. Her lips moved. 'Take her,' she panted, 'take that girl and her
shame from my honest house, lest I curse her.'
The two men looked at each other. They turned pale through their hardy
brownness, and then flushed darkly red. It flashed on them in an
instant. This was the meaning of the girl's sickness, of a thousand
hints they had not understood. Tom, with characteristic patience, was
the first to bend his back to the burden.
'Whisht, mother,' he said, 'whisht. Don't talk about cursing. If
there's one black sin under our roof-tree, we won't open the door to
another.' He put his arm round her in a tender way. 'Come, achora,' he
said, as if he were humouring a child, 'come and lie down. You're not
well, you creature.'
'Oh Tom,' said the mother, softening all at once, 'the black shame's
on me, and I'll never be well again in this world.'
She let him lift her to her bed in one of the little rooms that went
off the kitchen. Then he came back to where Larry stood, with an acute
misery on his young face, looking restlessly from the turf sods he was
kicking now and again to the door behind which their young sister lay
in agony.
'There's no help for it, Larry,' said Tom, touching him on the
shoulder. 'We can't trust her and the mother under one roof. We must
take her to the hospital. It's low water to-night, and you can get the
ass-cart across the sand. You'll take her, Larry, an' I'll stay an'
see to the mother.'
They wrapped the girl in all the bedclothes they could find and lifted
her into the little cart full of straw. The Island lay quiet under the
moon, all white with snow except where a black patch showed a ravine
or cleft in the rocks. In the fishing village the doors were shut and
the bits of curtains drawn. It was bitterly cold, and not a night for
any one to be abroad. The ass-cart went quietly over the snow. The two
men walked by it, never speaking; a low moaning came from the woman in
the cart. They did not meet a soul on their way to the shore.
At that point the Island sends out a long tongue of rock and sand
towards the mainland. At very low water there is but a shallow pool
between the two shores; over this they crossed. Sometimes the ass-cart
stuck fast in the sand. Then the men lifted the wheels gently, so as
not to jerk the cart, and then encouraging the little ass, they went
on again. When they had climbed up the rocky shore to the mainland,
and the cart was on the level road, they parted. Before Tom turned his
face homewards he bent down to Maggie. 'You're goin' where you'll be
taken care of, acushla. Don't fret; Larry'll fetch you home as soon as
you can travel,' he said. And then, as if he could scarcely bear the
sight of her drawn face in the moonlight, he turned abruptly, and went
striding down the rocky shore to the strand.
Because Tom and Larry had forgiven out of their great love, it did not
therefore follow that the shame did not lie heavily on them. Tom went
with so sad a face and so lagging a step that people's hearts ached
for him; while young Larry, who was always bright and merry, avoided
all the old friends, and when suddenly accosted turned a deep painful
red and refused to meet the eyes that looked their sympathy at him.
A few weeks passed and it was time for the girl to leave the hospital.
There had been long and bitter wrangles--bitter at least on one
side--between the mother and sons. She had sworn at first that she
would never live under the roof with the girl, but the lads returned
her always the same answer, 'If she goes we go too.' And by degrees
their dogged persistence dulled the old woman's fierce anger. Maggie
came home, and the cradle was established beside the hearth. At first
the brothers had whispered together of righting her, but when she had
answered them a question--a dull welt of shame tingling on their
cheeks and hers as though some one had cut them with a whip--they knew
it was useless. The man had gone to America some months before, and
was beyond the reach of their justice.
But the child throve as if it had the fairest right to be in the
world, and was no little nameless waif whose very existence was a
shame. He was a beautiful boy, round and tender, with his mother's
dark-blue eyes, and the exquisite baby skin which is softer than any
rose-leaf. From very early days he crowed and chuckled and was a most
cheerful baby. Left alone in his cradle he would be quietly happy for
hours; he slept a great deal, and only announced his waking from sleep
by a series of delighted chuckles, which brought his mother running to
his side to hoist him in her arms.
He must have been about a year old when I first saw him. Maggie
intruded him on no one, though people said that if any one admired
her baby it made her their lover for life. I happened to be in the
Island for a while, and one evening on a solitary ramble round the
cliffs I came face to face with Maggie,--Maggie stepping high, and
prettier than ever with that rapt glory of maternity in her face which
made ordinary prettiness common beside her.
I saw by the way she wisped the shawl round her full white chin that I
was welcome to pass her if I would. But I did not pass her. I stopped
and spoke a little on indifferent topics, and then I asked for the
baby. A radiant glow of pleasure swept over the young mother's
healthily pale face. She untwisted the shawl and lifted a fold of it,
and stood looking down at the sleeping child with a brooding
tenderness, almost divine. He was indeed lovely, with the flush of
sleep upon him and one little dimpled hand thrust against her breast.
'What a great boy!' I said. 'But you must be half killed carrying
him.' She laughed out joyfully, a sweet ringing laughter like the
music of bells. 'Deed then,' she said, ''tis the great load he is
entirely, an' any wan but meself 'ud be droppin' under the weight of
him. But it 'ud be the quare day I'd complain of my jewel. Sure it's
the light heart he gives me makes him lie light in my arms.'
But Maggie's mother remained untouched by the child's beauty and
winsomeness. Mother and daughter lived in the same house absolutely
without speech of each other. The girl was gentleness and humility
itself. For her own part she never forgot she was a sinner, though she
would let no one visit it on the child. I have been told that it was
most pathetic to see how she strove to win forgiveness from her
mother, how she watched and waited on her month after month with never
a sign from the old woman, who was not as strong as she had been. The
pain in her side took her occasionally, and since any exertion brought
it on she was fain at last to sit quietly in the chimney-corner a good
deal more than she had been used to. She had seen the doctor, very
much against her will, and he had said her heart was affected, but
with care and avoiding great excitement, it might last her to a good
old age.
Maggie was glad of the hard work put upon her. She washed and swept
and scrubbed and polished all day long, with a touching little air of
cheerfulness which never ceased to be sad unless when she was crooning
love-songs to the baby. She made no effort to take up her old friends
again, though she was so grateful when any one stopped and admired the
baby. She quite realised that her sin had set her apart, that nothing
in all the world could give her back what she had lost, and set her
again by the side of those happy companions of her childhood.
As the time passed she never seemed to feel that her mother was hard
and unrelenting. She bore her dark looks and her silence with amazing
patience. Usually the old woman seemed never to notice the child; but
once Maggie came in and saw her gazing at the sleeping face in the
cradle with what seemed to her a look of scorn and dislike. She gave a
great cry, like the cry of a wounded thing, and snatching the child,
ran out with him bareheaded, carrying him away to the high cliffs
covered with flowers full of honey, and there she crooned and cried
over him till the soothing of the sweet wind and the sunshine eased
her heart, and the blighting gaze that had fallen upon her darling had
left no shadow.
For her two brothers she felt and displayed a doglike devotion and
gratitude. The big fellows were sometimes almost uneasy under the love
of her eyes, and the thousand and one offices she was always doing for
them to try to make up to them for her past. They had come to take an
intense interest, at first half shamefaced, in the baby. But as he
grew older and full of winning ways, one could not always remember
that he was a child of shame, and he made just as much sunshine as any
lawful child makes in a house. More indeed, for in all the Island was
never so beautiful a child. The sun seemed to shed all its rays on his
head; his eyes were blue as the sea; his limbs were sturdy and
beautiful, and from the time he began to take notice he sent out
little tendrils that gathered round the hearts of all those who looked
upon him. So kind is God sometimes to a little nameless child.
But to see Maggie while her brothers played with the boy, tossing him
in their arms, and letting him spring from one to the other, was
indeed a pretty sight. You know the proud confidence with which an
animal that loves you looks on at your handling of her little
ones--her anxiety quite swallowed up in her pride and confidence and
her benevolent satisfaction in the pleasure she is giving you. That is
how Maggie watched those delightful romps. But the old woman in the
chimney-corner turned away her head; and never forgot that Maggie had
stolen God's gift, and that the scarlet letter was on the boy's white
forehead.
As the years passed and the boy throve and grew tall, I heard of
Maggie becoming very devout. 'A true penitent,' said Father Tiernay to
me, 'and I believe that in return for the patience and gentleness with
which she has striven to expiate her sin God has given her a very
unusual degree of sanctity.' In the intervals of her work she was
permitted as a great privilege to help about the altar linen, and keep
the church clean. She used to carry the boy with her when she went to
the church, and I have come upon him fast asleep in a sheltered
corner, while his mother was sweeping and dusting, with a radiant and
sanctified look on a face that had grown very spiritual.
But still the old mother remained inexorable. I am sure in her own
mind she resented as a profanation her daughter's work about the
church. She herself had never entered that familiar holy place since
her daughter's disgrace. Sunday and holiday all these years she had
trudged to Breagh, a long way round by the coast, for mass. All
expostulations have been vain, even Father Tiernay's own. Whatever
other people may forget, the sin has lost nothing of its scarlet for
her.
It was the last time I was on the Island that I was told of Maggie's
marriage. Not to an Island man: oh no, no Island man would marry a
girl with a stain on her character, not though she came to be as high
in God's favour as the blessed Magdalen herself. He was the mate of a
Scotch vessel, a grave, steady, strong-faced Highlander. He had come
to the Island trading for years, and knew Maggie's story as well as
any Islander. But he had seen beyond the mirk of the sin the woman's
soul pure as a pearl.
Maggie could not believe that any man, least of all a man like
Alister, wanted to marry her. 'I am a wicked woman,' she said with hot
blushes, 'and you must marry a good woman.'
'I mean to marry a good woman, my lass,' he said, 'the best woman I
know. And that is your bonny self.' Maggie hesitated. He smoothed back
her hair with a fond proprietary touch. 'We'll give the boy a name,'
he said, 'and before God, none will ever know he's not my own boy.'
That settled it. Jack was a big lad of six now, and would soon begin
to understand things, and perhaps ask for his father. It opened before
her like an incredible exquisite happiness that perhaps he need never
know her sin. She put her hand into Alister's and accepted him in a
passion of sobbing that was half joy, half sorrow.
The brothers were all in favour of the marriage. They loved her too
much not to want her to have a fair chance in a new life. Here on the
Island, though she were a saint, she would still be a penitent. It
came hardest on Tom,--for Larry was soon to bring home a wife of his
own, but neither man talked much of what he felt. They put aside their
personal sorrow and were glad for Maggie and her boy.
But Maggie's mother was consistent to the last. No brazen and
flaunting sinner could have seemed to her more a lost creature than
the girl who had been so dutiful a daughter, so loving a sister, so
perfect a mother, all those years. Tom told her the news. 'I wash my
hands of her,' she said. 'Let her take her shame under an honest man's
roof if she will. I wish her neither joy nor sorrow of it.' And more
gentle words than these Tom could not bring her to say.
So Maggie was married, the old woman preserving her stony silence and
apparent unconcern. She only spoke once,--the day the girl was made a
wife. It was one of her bad days, and she had to lie down after an
attack of her heart. Maggie dressed to go to the church and meet her
bridegroom. She was not to return to the cottage, and her modest
little luggage and little Jack's were already aboard the Glasgow brig.
At the last, hoping for some sign of softening, the girl went into the
dim room where her mother lay, ashen-cheeked. The mother turned round
on her her dim eyes. 'What do you want of me?' she asked, breaking the
silence of years. The girl helplessly covered her eyes with her hands.
'Did you come for my blessing?' gasped the old woman. 'It is liker my
curse you'd take with you. But I promised Tom long ago that I would
not curse you. Go then. And I praise God that Larry will soon give me
an honest daughter instead of you, my shame this many a year.'
That was the last meeting of mother and daughter. They say Alister is
a devoted husband, but he comes no more to the Island. He has changed
out of his old boat, and his late shipmates say vaguely that he has
removed somewhere Sunderland or Cardiff way, and trades to the North
Sea. Tom is very reticent about Maggie, though Miss Bell, the
postmistress, might tell, if she were not a superior person, and as
used to keeping a secret at a pinch as Father Tiernay himself, how
many letters he receives with the post-mark of a well-known seaport
town.
Poor Maggie! Said I not that in the Island the way of transgressors is
hard?
IV
A RICH WOMAN
Margret Laffan was something of a mystery to the Island people. Long
ago in comparative youth she had disappeared for a half-dozen years.
Then she had turned up one day in a coarse dress of blue and white
check, which looked suspiciously like workhouse or asylum garb, and
had greeted such of the neighbours as she knew with a nod, for all the
world as if she had seen them yesterday. It happened that the henwife
at the Hall had been buried a day or two earlier, and when Margret
came asking a place from Mrs. Wilkinson, the lord's housekeeper, the
position was yet unfilled and Margret got it.