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.