"Martin," I said, "there is something you don't know."
And then, I told him--it was forced out of me--my modesty went down in
the fierce battle with a higher pain, and I do not know whether it was
my pride or my shame or my love that compelled me to tell him, but I
_did_ tell him--God knows how--that I could not run the risk he referred
to because I was not in that sense my husband's wife and never had been.
The light was behind me, and my face was in the darkness; but still I
covered it with my hands while I stammered out the story of my marriage
day and the day after, and of the compact I had entered into with my
husband that only when and if I came to love him should he claim my
submission as a wife.
While I was speaking I knew that Martin's eyes were fixed on me, for I
could feel his breath on the back of my hands, but before I had finished
he leapt up and cried excitedly:
"And that compact has been kept?"
"Yes."
"Then it's all right! Don't be afraid. You shall be free. Come in and
let me tell you how! Come in, come in!"
He took me back into the boudoir. I had no power to resist him. His face
was as pale as death, but his eyes were shining. He made me sit down and
then sat on the table in front of me.
"Listen!" he said. "When I bought my ship from the Lieutenant we signed
a deed, a contract, as a witness before all men that he would give me
his ship and I would give him some money. But if after all he hadn't
given me his ship what would our deed have been? Only so much waste
paper."
It was the same with my marriage. If it had been an honest contract, the
marriage service would have been a witness before God that we meant to
live together as man and wife. But I never had, therefore what was the
marriage service? Only an empty ceremony!
"That's the plain sense of the matter, isn't it?" he cried. "I defy any
priest in the world to prove the contrary."
"Well?"
"Well, don't you see what it comes to? You are free--morally free at all
events. You can come to me. You must, too. I daren't leave you in this
house any longer. I shall take you to London and fix you up there, and
then, when I tome back from the Antarctic . . ."
He was glowing with joy, but a cold hand suddenly seized me, for I had
remembered all the terrors of excommunication as Father Dan had
described them.
"But Martin," I said, "would the Church accept that?"
"What matter whether it would or wouldn't? Our consciences would be
clear. There would be no sin, and what you were saying this morning
would not apply."
"But if I left my husband I couldn't marry you, could I?"
"Perhaps not."
"Then the Church would say that I was a sinful woman living a sinful
life, wouldn't it?"
"But you wouldn't be."
"All the same the Church would say so, and if it did I should be cut out
of communion, and if I were cut out of communion I should be cast out of
the Church, and if I were cast out of the Church . . . what would become
of me then?"
"But, my dear, dear girl," said Martin, "don't you see that this is not
the same thing at all? It is only a case of a ceremony. And why should
a mere ceremony--even if we cannot do away with it--darken a woman's
life for ever?"
My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out for
salvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him what
Father Dan had said I was to say.
"Father Dan is a saint and I love him," he said. "But what can he
know--what can any priest know of a situation like this? The law of man
has tied you to this brute, but the law of God has given you to me. Why
should a marriage service stand between us?"
"But it does," I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare not break
the law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I cannot give up
my religion."
After that Martin did not speak for a moment. Then he said:
"You mean that, Mary?"
"Yes."
And then my heart accused me so terribly of the crime of resisting him
that I took his hand and held his fingers in a tight lock while I told
him--what I had never meant to tell--how long and how deeply I had loved
him, but nevertheless I dared not face the thought of living and dying
without the consolations of the Church.
"I dare not! I dare not!" I said. "I should be a broken-hearted woman if
I did, and you don't want that, do you?"
He listened in silence, though the irregular lines in his face showed
the disordered state of his soul, and when I had finished a wild look
came into his eyes and he said:
"I am disappointed in you, Mary. I thought you were brave and fearless,
and that when I showed you a way out of your miserable entanglement you
would take it in spite of everything."
His voice was growing thick again. I could scarcely bear to listen to
it.
"Do you suppose I wanted to take up the position I proposed to you? Not
I. No decent man ever does. But I love you so dearly that I was willing
to make that sacrifice and count it as nothing if only I could rescue
you from the misery of your abominable marriage."
Then he broke into a kind of fierce laughter, and said:
"It seems I wasn't wanted, though. You say in effect that my love is
sinful and criminal, and that it will imperil your soul. So I'm only
making mischief here and the sooner I get away the better for
everybody."
He threw off my hand, stepped to the door to the balcony, and looking
out into the darkness said, between choking laughter and sobs:
"Ellan, you are no place for me. I can't bear the sight of you any
longer. I used to think you were the dearest spot on earth, because you
were the home of her who would follow me to the ends of the earth if I
wanted her, but I was wrong. She loves me less than a wretched ceremony,
and would sacrifice my happiness to a miserable bit of parchment."
My heart was clamouring loud. Never had I loved him so much as now. I
had to struggle with myself not to throw myself into his arms.
"No matter!" he said. "I should be a poor-spirited fool to stay where
I'm not wanted. I must get back to my work. The sooner the better, too.
I thought I should be counting the days down there until I could come
home again. But why should I? And why should I care what happens to me?
It's all as one now."
He stepped back from the balcony with a resolute expression on his
gloomy face, and I thought for a moment (half hoping and half fearing
it) that he was going to lay hold of me and tell me I must do what he
wished because I belonged to him.
But he only looked at me for a moment in silence, and then burst into a
flood of tears, and turned and ran out of the house.
Let who will say his tears were unmanly. To me they were the bitter cry
of a great heart, and I wanted to follow him and say, "Take me. Do what
you like with me. I am yours."
I did not do so. I sat a long time where he had left me and then I went
into my room and locked the door.
I did not cry. Unjust and cruel as his reproaches had been, I began to
have a strange wild joy in them. I knew that he would not have insulted
me like that if he had not loved me to the very verge of madness itself.
Hours passed. Price came tapping at my door to ask if she should lock up
the house--meaning the balcony. I answered "No, go to bed."
I heard the deadened thud of Martin's footsteps on the lawn passing to
and fro. Sometimes they paused under my window and then I had a feeling,
amounting to certainty, that he was listening to hear if I was sobbing,
and that if I had been he would have broken down my bedroom door to get
to me.
At length I heard him come up the stone stairway, shut and bolt the
balcony door, and walk heavily across the corridor to his own room.
The day was then dawning. It was four o'clock.