Next morning, Monday morning, while I was breakfasting in my bedroom,
Price came with a message from Martin to say that he was going into the
glen and wished to know if I would go with him.
I knew perfectly what that meant. He wished to tell me what steps he
intended to take towards my divorce, and my heart trembled with the
thought of the answer I had to give him--that divorce for me, under any
circumstances, was quite impossible.
Sorry as I was for myself I was still more sorry for Martin. I felt
like a judge who had to pronounce sentence upon him--dooming his dearest
hopes to painful and instant death.
I could hear him on the lawn with Tommy the Mate, laughing like a boy
let loose from school, and when I went down to him he greeted me with a
cry of joy that was almost heart-breaking.
Our way to the glen was through a field of grass, where the dew was
thick, and, my boots being thin, Martin in his high spirits wished to
carry me across, and it was only with an effort that I prevented him
from doing so.
The glen itself when we reached it (it was called Glen Raa) was almost
cruelly beautiful that day, and remembering what I had to do in it I
thought I should never be able to get it out of my sight--with its
slumberous gloom like that of a vast cathedral, its thick arch of
overhanging boughs through which the morning sunlight was streaming
slantwards like the light through the windows of a clerestory, its
running water below, its rustling leaves above, and the chirping of its
birds on every side, making a sound that was like the chanting of a
choir in some far-off apse and the rumbling of their voices in the roof.
Two or three times, as we walked down the glen towards a port (Port Raa)
which lay at the seaward end of it. Martin rallied me on the settled
gravity of my face and then I had to smile, though how I did so I do not
know, for every other minute my heart was in my mouth, and never more so
than when, to make me laugh, he rattled away in the language of his
boyhood, saying:
"Isn't this stunning? Splendiferous, eh?"
When we came out at the mouth of the port, where a line of little
stunted oaks leaned landward as with the memory of many a winter's
storm, Martin said:
"Let us sit down here."
We sat on the sloping bank, with the insects ticking in the grass, the
bees humming in the air, the sea fowl screaming in the sky, the broad
sea in front, and the little bay below, where the tide, which was going
out, had left behind it a sharp reef of black rocks covered with
sea-weed.
A pleasure-steamer passed at that moment with its flags flying, its
awnings spread, its decks crowded with excursionists, and a brass hand
playing one of Sousa's marches, and as soon as it had gone, Martin said:
"I've been thinking about our affair, Mary, how to go to work and all
that, and of course the first thing we've got to do is to get a
divorce."
I made no answer, and I tried not to look at him by fixing my eyes upon
the sea.
"You have evidence enough, you know, and if you haven't there's
Price--she has plenty. So, since you've given me the right to speak for
you, dear, I'm going to speak to your father first"
I must have made some half-articulate response, for not understanding me
he said:
"Oh, I know he'll be a hard nut to crack. He won't want to hear what
I've got to say, but he has got to hear it. And after all you're his
daughter, and if he has any bowels of compassion . . ."
Again I must have made some effort to speak, for he said:
"Yes, he's ill, but he has only to set Curphy to work and the lawyer
will do the rest."
I could not allow him to go any further, so I blurted out somehow that I
had seen my father already.
"On this subject?"
"Yes."
"And what did he say?"
I told him as well as I could what my father had said, being ashamed to
repeat it.
"That was only bluff, though," said Martin. "The real truth is that you
would cease to be Lady Raa and that would be a blow to his pride. Then
there would no longer be any possibility of establishing a family and
that would disturb his plans. No matter! We can set Curphy to work
ourselves."
"But I have seen Mr. Curphy also," I said.
"And what did _he_ say?"