The moon had died out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying as quiet
as a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky was crimsoning
before the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls were swirling and
jabbering above the rocks in the harbour below the house before I lay
down to sleep.
I was awakened by a hurried knocking at my door, and by an impatient
voice crying:
"Mary! Mary! Get up! Let me in!"
It was Aunt Bridget who had arrived in my husband's automobile. When I
opened the door to her she came sailing into the room with her new
half-moon bonnet a little awry, as if she had put it on hurriedly in the
dim light of early morning, and, looking at me with her cold grey eyes
behind their gold-rimmed spectacles, she began to bombard me with
mingled ridicule and indignant protest.
"Goodness me, girl, what's all this fuss about? You little simpleton,
tell me what has happened!"
She was laughing. I had hardly ever heard Aunt Bridget laugh before. But
her vexation soon got the better of her merriment.
"His lordship's letter arrived in the middle of the night and nearly
frightened us out of our senses. Your father was for coming away
straight, and it would have been worse for you if he had. But I said:
'No, this is work for a woman, I'll go,' and here I am. And now tell me,
what in the name of goodness does this ridiculous trouble mean?"
It was hard to say anything on such a subject under such circumstances,
especially when so challenged, but Aunt Bridget, without waiting for my
reply, proceeded to indicate the substance of my husband's letter.
From this I gathered that he had chosen (probably to save his pride) to
set down my resistance to ignorance of the first conditions of
matrimony, and had charged my father first and Aunt Bridget afterwards
with doing him a shocking injustice in permitting me to be married to
him without telling me what every girl who becomes a wife ought to know.
"But, good gracious," said my Aunt Bridget, "who would have imagined you
_didn't_ know. I thought every girl in the world knew before she put up
her hair and came out of short frocks. My Betsy did, I'm sure of that.
And to think that you--you whom we thought so cute, so cunning. . . .
Mary O'Neill, I'm ashamed of you. I really, really am! Why, you goose"
(Aunt Bridget was again trying to laugh), "how did you suppose the world
went on?"
The coarse ridicule of what was supposed to be my maidenly modesty cut
me like a knife, but I could not permit myself to explain, so my Aunt
Bridget ran on talking.
"I see how it has been. It's the fault of that Reverend Mother at the
convent. What sort of a woman is she? Is she a woman at all, I wonder,
or only a piece of stucco that ought to be put up in a church corner! To
think she could have you nine years and never say one word about. . . .
Well, well! What has she been doing with you? Talking about the
mysteries, I suppose--prayers and retreats and novenas, and the
spiritual bridegroom and the rest of it, while all the while. . . . But
you must put the convent out of your head, my girl. You are a married
woman now. You've got to think of your husband, and a husband isn't a
spiritual bridegroom I can tell you. He's flesh and blood, that's what a
husband is, and you can't expect _him_ to spend his time talking about
eternity and the rosary. Not on his wedding-day, anyway."
I was hot in my absurd embarrassment, and I dare say my face was
scarlet, but Aunt Bridget showed me no mercy.
"The way you have behaved is too silly for anything. . . . It really is.
A husband's a husband, and a wife's a wife. The wife has to obey her
husband. Of course she has. Every wife has to. Some don't like it. I
can't say that I liked it very much myself. But to think of anybody
objecting. Why, it's shocking! Nobody ever heard of such a thing."
I must have flushed up to my forehead, for I became conscious that in my
Aunt Bridget's eyes there had been a kind of indecency in my conduct.
"But, come," she said, "we must be sensible. It's timidity, that's what
it is. I was a little timid myself when I was first married, but I soon
got over it. Once get over your timidity and you will be all right.
Sakes alive, yes, you'll be as happy as the day is long, and before this
time to-morrow you'll wonder what on earth you made all this fuss
about."
I tried to say that what she predicted could never be, because I did not
love my husband, and therefore . . . but my Aunt Bridget broke in on me,
saying:
"Mary O'Neill, don't be a fool. Your maiden days are over now, and you
ought to know what your husband will do if you persist."
I jumped at the thought that she meant he would annul our marriage, but
that was not what she was thinking of.
"He'll find somebody else--that's what he'll do. Serve you right, too.
You'll only have yourself to blame for it. Perhaps you think you'll be
able to do the same, but you won't. Women can't. He'll be happy enough,
and you'll be the only one to suffer, so don't make a fool of yourself.
Accept the situation. You may not like your husband too much. I can't
say I liked the Colonel particularly. He took snuff, and no woman in the
world could keep him in clean pocket handkerchiefs. But when a sensible
person has got something at stake, she puts up with things. And that's
what you must do. He who wants fresh eggs must raise his own chickens,
you know."
Aunt Bridget ran on for some time longer, telling me of my father's
anger, which was not a matter for much surprise, seeing how he had built
himself upon my marriage, and how he had expected that I should have a
child, a son, to carry on the family.
"Do you mean to disappoint him after all he has done for you? It would
be too silly, too stupid. You'd be the laughing-stock of the whole
island. So get up and get dressed and be ready and willing to go with
his lordship when he sails by this afternoon's steamer."
"I can't," I said.
"You can't? You mean you won't?"
"Very well, Auntie, I won't."
At that Aunt Bridget stormed at me for several minutes, telling me that
if my stubborn determination not to leave the island with my husband
meant that I intended to return home she might inform me at once that I
was not wanted there and I need not come.
"I've enough on my hands in that house already, what with Betsy
unmarried, and your father doing nothing for her, and that nasty Nessy
MacLeod making up to him. You ungrateful minx! You are ruining
everything! After all I've done for you too! But no matter! If you
_will_ make your bed I shall take care that you lie on it."
With that, and the peak of her half-moon bonnet almost dancing over her
angry face, Aunt Bridget flounced out of my room.
Half an hour afterwards, when I went into the sitting-room, I found my
father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, waiting for me. He looked down at me with
an indulgent and significant smile, which brought the colour rushing
back to my face, put me to sit by his side, touched my arm with one of
his large white clammy hands, stroked his long brown beard with the
other, and then in the half-reproving tone which a Sunday-school teacher
might have used to a wayward child, he began to tell me what the
consequences would be if I persisted in my present conduct.
They would be serious. The law was very clear on marital rights. If a
wife refused to live with her husband, except on a plea of cruelty or
something equally plausible, he could apply to the court and compel her
to do so; and if she declined, if she removed herself from his abode, or
having removed, refused to return, the Court might punish her--it might
even imprison her.
"So you see, the man is the top dog in a case like this, my dear, and he
can compel the woman to obey him."
"Do you mean," I said, "that he can use force to compel her?"
"Reasonable force, yes. I think that's so. And quite right, too, when
you come to think of it. The woman has entered into a serious contract,
and it is the duty of the law to see that she fulfills the conditions of
it."
I remembered how little I had known of the conditions of the contract I
had entered into, but I was too heart-sick and ashamed to say anything
about that.
"Aw yes, that's so," said the advocate, "force, reasonable force! You
may say it puts a woman in a worse position as a wife than she would be
if she were a mistress. That's true, but it's the law, and once a woman
has married a man, the only escape from this condition of submission is
imprisonment."
"Then I would rather that--a thousand times rather," I said, for I was
hot with anger and indignation.
Again the advocate smiled indulgently, patted my arm, and answered me as
if I were a child.
"Tut, tut, my dear, tut, tut! You've made a marriage that is founded on
suitability of position, property and education, and everything will
come right by and by. Don't act on a fit of pique or spleen, and so
destroy your happiness, and that of everybody about you. Think of your
father. Remember what he has done to make this marriage. I may tell you
that he has paid forty thousand pounds to discharge your husband's debts
and undertaken responsibility for an allowance of six thousand a year
beside. Do you want him to lose all that money?"
I was so sick with disgust at hearing this that I could not speak, and
the advocate, who, in his different way, was as dead to my real feelings
as my husband had been, went on to say:
"Come, be reasonable. You may have suffered some slight, some indignity.
No doubt you have. Your husband is proud and he has peculiarities of
temper which we have all to make allowances for. But even if you could
establish a charge of cruelty against him and so secure a
separation--which you can't--what good would that do you? None at
all--worse than none! The financial arrangements would remain the same.
Your father would be a frightful loser. And what would you be? A married
widow! The worst condition in the world for a woman--especially if she
is young and attractive, and subject to temptations. Ask anybody who
knows--anybody."