And yet I was a fool, or in spite of everything I should have spoken to
Daniel O'Neill before he left Rome. I should have said to him:
"Do you know that the man to whom you are going to marry your daughter
is a profligate and a reprobate? If you _do_ know this, are you
deliberately selling her, body and soul, to gratify your lust of rank
and power and all the rest of your rotten aspirations?"
That is what I ought to have done, but didn't do. I was afraid of being
thought to have personal motives--of interfering where I wasn't wanted,
of butting in when I had no right.
Yet I felt I _had_ a right, and I had half a mind to throw up everything
and go back to Ellan. But the expedition was the big chance I had been
looking forward to and I could not give it up.
So I resolved to write. But writing isn't exactly my job, and it took me
a fortnight to get anything done to my satisfaction. By that time we
were at Port Said, and from there I posted three letters,--the first to
Daniel O'Neill, the second to Bishop Walsh, the third to Father Dan.
Would they reach in time? If so, would they be read and considered or
resented and destroyed?
I did not know. I could not guess. And then I was going down into the
deep Antarctic night, where no sound from the living world could reach
me.
What would happen before I could get back? Only God could say.