"Then cut her out. I guess you're clever enough to do it, whoever she
is. You've got the looks too, and I don't grudge you the money. Cut her
out--that's the best advice I can give you. Make your husband see you're
the better woman of the two. Cut her out, I'm saying, and don't come
whining here like a cry-baby, who runs to her grandmother's
apron-strings at the first scratch she gets outside."
He had been reaching forward, but he now fell back on his pillows,
saying:
"I see how it is, though. Women without children are always vapouring
about their husbands, as if married life ought to be a garden of Eden.
One woman, one man, and all the rest of the balderdash. I sot your Aunt
Bridget on you before, gel, and I'll have to do it again I'm thinking.
But go away now. If I'm to get better I must have rest. Nessy!"
(calling) "I've a mort o' things to do and most everything is on my
shoulders. Nessy! My medicine! Nessy! Nessy! Where in the world has that
girl gone to?"
"I'm here, Daniel," said Nessy MacLeod coming back to the room; and as I
went out and passed down the corridor, with a crushed and broken spirit
and the tears ready to gush from my eyes, I heard her coaxing him in her
submissive and insincere tones, while he blamed and scolded her.
Half an hour afterwards Aunt Bridget came to me in my mother's room.
Never in my life before had I been pleased to see her. She, at least,
would see my situation with a woman's eyes. But I was doomed to another
disappointment.
"Goodness me, girl," she cried, "what's this your father tells me? One
of your own guests, is it? That one with the big eyes I'll go bail.
Well, serve you right, I say, for bringing a woman like that into the
house with your husband--so smart and such a quality toss with her. If
you were lonely coming home why didn't you ask your aunt or your first
cousin? There would have been no trouble with your husband then--not
about me at all events. But what are you thinking of doing?"
"Getting a divorce," I answered, firmly, for my heart was now aflame.
If I had held a revolver in Aunt Bridget's face she could not have
looked more shocked.
"Mary O'Neill, are you mad?" she cried. "Divorce indeed! No woman of
our family has ever disgraced herself like that. What will your father
say? What's to happen to Betsy Beauty? What are people going to think
about me?"
I answered that I had not made my marriage, and those who had made it
must take the consequences.
"What does that matter now? Hundreds of thousands of women have married
the wrong man of their own free will, but if every woman who has made a
rue-bargain were to try to get out of it your way where would the world
be, I wonder? Perhaps you think you could marry somebody else, but you
couldn't. What decent man wants to marry a divorced woman even if she
_is_ the injured party?"
"Then you think I ought to submit--tamely submit to such infidelities?"
I asked.
"Sakes alive," said Aunt Bridget, "what else can you do? Men are
polygamous animals, and we women have to make up our minds to it.
Goodness knows I had to when the old colonel used to go hanging around
those English barmaids at the 'Cock and Hen.' Be a little blind,
girl--that's what nine wives out of ten have to be every day and every
night and all the world over."
"Will that make my husband any better?" I asked.
"I don't say it will," said Aunt Bridget. "It will make _you_ better,
though. What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve for. That's
something, isn't it?"
When I went to bed that night my whole soul was in revolt. The Church,
the law, society, parental power, all the conventions and
respectabilities seemed to be in a conspiracy to condone my husband's
offence and to make me his scapegoat, doomed to a life of hypocrisy and
therefore immorality and shame. I would die rather than endure it. Yes,
I would die that very day rather than return to my husband's house and
go through the same ordeal again.
But next morning when I thought of Martin, as I always did on first
awakening, I told myself that I would live and be a clean woman in my
own eyes _whatever the World might think of me_.
Martin was now my only refuge, so I would tell him everything. It would
be hard to do that, but no matter, I would crush down my modesty and
tell him everything. And then, whatever he told me to do I should do it.
I knew quite well what my resolution meant, what it implied and
involved, but still I thought, "_Whatever he tells me to do I will do
it_."
I remembered what the Countess in Rome had said about a life of
"complete emancipation" as an escape from unhappy marriage, and even yet
I thought "_Whatever he tells me to do I will do it_."
After coming to that conclusion I felt more at ease and got up to dress.
It was a beautiful morning, and I looked down into the orchard, where
the apples were reddening under the sunshine and the gooseberries were
ripening under their hanging boughs, when in the quiet summer air I
heard a footstep approaching.
An elderly woman in an old-fashioned quakerish bonnet was coming up the
drive. She carried a little bunch of red and white roses, and her face,
which was very sweet and simple, wore the pathetic expression of a child
in trouble.
It was Martin's mother. She was coming to see me, and at the first sight
of her something told me that my brave resolution was about to be
broken, and I was going to be shaken to the depths of my being.
I heard the bell of the front door ringing. After a moment a maid came
up and said:
"Mrs. Doctor Conrad has called to see your ladyship."
"Bring her here," I answered.
My heart was in my mouth already.