Recalling my last sight of his face as he ran out of the house, and
knowing well the desire of my own heart, I felt that if I spent another
day in his company it would be impossible to say what might happen.
As a result of this riot of emotions I resolved to remain all day in my
room, and towards evening to send out a letter bidding him good-bye and
good-luck. It would be a cold end to a long friendship and my heart was
almost frozen at the thought of it, but it was all I dared do and I saw
no help for it.
But how little did I know what was written in the Book of Fate for me!
First came Price on pretence of bathing my forehead, and she bombarded
me with accounts of Martin's anxiety. When he had heard that I was ill
he had turned as white as if sixteen ounces of blood had been taken out
of him. It nearly broke me up to hear that, but Price, who was artful,
only laughed and said:
"Men _are_ such funny things, bless them! To think of that fine young
man, who is big enough to fell an ox and brave enough to face a lion,
being scared to death because a little lady has a headache."
All morning she was in and out of my room with similar stories, and
towards noon she brought me a bunch of roses wet with the dew, saying
that Tommy the Mate had sent them.
"Are you sure it was Tommy the Mate?" I asked, whereupon the sly thing,
who was only waiting to tell the truth, though she pretended that I was
forcing it out of her, admitted that the flowers were from Martin, and
that he had told her not to say so.
"What's he doing now?" I asked.
"Writing a letter," said Price, "and judging by the times he has torn it
up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, I
can tell you."
I thought I knew whom the letter was meant for, and before luncheon it
came up to me.
It was the first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted
me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such a
great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with
all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and
even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin--my boy
who could never learn his lessons.
_"Dear Mary,--I am destroyed to here how ill you are, and when I think
it's all my fault I am ready to kick myself.
"Don't worry about what I was saying last night. I was mad to think what
might happen to you while I should be down there, but I've been thinking
it over since and I've come to the conclusion that if their is anything
to God He can be trusted to look after you without any help from me, so
when we meet again before I go away we'll never say another word on the
subject--that's a promice.
"I can't go until your better though, so I'm just sending the jaunting
car into town with a telegram to London telling them to postpone the
expedision on account of illness, and if they think it's mine it won't
matter because it's something worse.
"But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you might come to
the window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be as happy as a
sand-boy.
"Yours,
"Mart."_
To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an immediate
verbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and hoped to be up to
dinner, so he must not send that telegram to London on any account,
seeing that nobody knew what was going to happen and everything was in
the hands of God.
Price took my message with a knowing smile at the corner of her mouth,
and a few minutes afterwards I heard Martin laughing with Tommy the Mate
at the other end of the lawn.
I don't know why I took so much pains with my dress that night. I did
not expect to see Martin again. I was sending him away from me. Yet
never before had I dressed myself with so much care. I put on the soft
white satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a string of pearls over
my hair, and another (a tight one) about my neck.
Martin was waiting for me in the boudoir, and to my surprise he had
dressed too, but, except that he wore a soft silk shirt, I did not know
what he was wearing, or whether he looked handsome or not, because it
was Martin and that was all that mattered to me.
I am sure my footstep was light as I entered the room, for I was shod in
white satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his eyes fluttering
as he looked at me, and said something sweet about a silvery fir tree
with its little dark head against the sky.
"It's to be a truce, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yes, a truce," I answered, which meant that as this was to be our last
evening together all painful subjects were to be put aside.
Before we sat down to eat he took me out on to the balcony to look at
the sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet lightning with
low rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for a moment with
visions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by the grim and
greedy darkness.
During dinner we kept faith with each other. In order to avoid the one
subject that was uppermost in both our minds, we played at being
children, and pretended it was the day we sailed to St. Mary's Rock.
Thinking back to that time, and all the incidents which he had thought
so heroic and I so tragic, we dropped into the vernacular, and I called
him "boy" and he called me "bogh millish," and at every racy word that
came up from the forgotten cells of our brains we shrieked with
laughter.
When Martin spoke of his skipper I asked "Is he a stunner?" When he
mentioned one of his scientific experts I inquired "Is he any good?" And
after he had told me that he hoped to take possession of some island in
the name of the English crown, and raise the Union Jack on it, I said:
"Do or die, we allus does that when we're out asploring."
How we laughed! He laughed because I laughed, and I laughed because he
was laughing. I had some delicious moments of femininity too (such as no
woman can resist), until it struck me suddenly that in all this
make-believe we were making love to each other again. That frightened me
for a time, but I told myself that everything was safe as long as we
could carry on the game.
It was not always easy to do so, though, for some of our laughter had
tears behind it, and some of our memories had an unexpected sting,
because things had a meaning for us now which they never had before, and
we were compelled to realise what life had done for us.
Thus I found my throat throbbing when I recalled the loss of our boat,
leaving us alone together on that cruel rock with the rising tide
threatening to submerge us, and I nearly choked when I repeated my last
despairing cry: "I'm not a stunner! . . . and you'll have to give me up
. . . and leave me here, and save yourself."
It was like walking over a solfataro with the thin hot earth ready to
break up under our feet.
To escape from it I sat down at the piano and began to sing. I dared not
sing the music I loved best--the solemn music of the convent--so I sang
some of the nonsense songs I had heard in the streets. At one moment I
twisted round on the piano stool and said:
"I'll bet you anything"--(I always caught Martin's tone in Martin's
company), "you can't remember the song I sang sitting in the boat with
William Rufus on my lap."
"I'll bet you anything I can," said Martin.
"Oh, no, you can't," I said.
"Have it as you like, bogh, but sing it for all," said Martin, and then
I sang--
_"Oh, Sally's the gel for me,
Our Sally's the gel for me,
I'll marry the gel that I love best,
When I come back from sea."_
But that arrow of memory had been sharpened on Time's grindstone and it
seemed to pierce through us, so Martin proposed that we should try the
rollicking chorus which the excursionists had sung on the
pleasure-steamer the night before.
He did not know a note of music and he had no more voice than a
corn-crake, but crushing up on to the music-stool by my side, he banged
away with his left hand while I played with my right, and we sang
together in a wild delightful discord--
_"Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,
Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be."_
We laughed again when that was over, but I knew I could not keep it up
much longer, and every now and then I forgot that I was in my boudoir
and seemed to see that lonesome plateau, twelve thousand feet above the
icy barrier that guards the Pole, and Martin toiling through blizzards
over rolling waves of snow.
Towards midnight we went out on to the balcony to look at the lightning
for the last time. The thunder was shaking the cliffs and rolling along
them like cannon-balls, and Martin said:
"It sounds like the breaking of the ice down there."
When we returned to the room he told me he would have to be off early in
the morning, before I was out of bed, having something to do in
Blackwater, where "the boys were getting up a spree of some sort."
In this way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking himself
down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came at
last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for the
whirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and the
beginning of the new.
My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at him. Our
eyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own was hot and
trembling.
"So this is . . . the end," he said.
"Yes . . . the end," I answered.
"Well, we've had a jolly evening to finish up with, anyway," he said. "I
shall always remember it."
I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about that
would make him forget this one.
"Never in this world!" he answered.
I tried to wish him good luck, and great success, and a happy return to
fame and fortune. He looked at me with his great liquid eyes and said:
"Aw, well, that's all as one now."
I tried to tell him it would always be a joy to me to remember that he
and I had been such great, great friends.
He looked at me again, and answered:
"That's all as one also."
I reproached myself for the pain I was causing him, and to keep myself
in countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility of
renunciation--each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful thoughts
and desires.
"Yes, I'm doing what you wish," he said. "I can't deny you anything."
That cut me deep, so I went on to say that if I had acted otherwise I
should always have had behind me the memory of the vows I had broken,
the sacrament I had violated, and the faith I had abandoned.
"All the same we might have been very happy," he said, and then my
throat became so thick that I could not say any more.
After a few moments he said:
"It breaks my heart to leave you. But I suppose I must, though I don't
know what is going to happen."
"All that is in God's hands," I said.
"Yes," said Martin, "it's up to Him now."
It made my heart ache to look at his desolate face, so, struggling hard
with my voice, I tried to tell him he must not despair.
"You are so young," I said. "Surely the future holds much happiness for
you."
And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman taking the
love I was turning away would have made the world a blank for me, I
actually said something about the purest joys of love falling to his lot
some day.
"No, by the Lord God," said Martin. "There'll be no other woman for me.
If I'm not to have you I'll wear the willow for you the same as if you
were dead."
There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of secret joy
in it too.
He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long time. In
spite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand go. I felt as
if I were a drowning woman and his hand were my only safety.
Nevertheless I said:
"We must say good-night and good-bye now."
"And if it is for ever?"
"Don't say that."
"But if it is?"
"Well, then . . . for ever."
"At least give me something to take away with me," he said.
"Better not," I answered, but even as I spoke I dropped the handkerchief
which I had been holding in my other hand and he picked it up.
I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back, were
trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as it
had been the night before.
There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing but
the fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my hand to his lips,
dropped it gently and walked over to the door.
But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked at him,
longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at which my
heart could warm itself.
Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost all
control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mighty
surging river.
Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and
snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped me
tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in a
quivering, husky voice:
"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you because
you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We love
each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you
are, or what they do with you, you are mine and always will be."
My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was a
roaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a woman,
and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken possession
of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. I
wanted to give myself up to it.
But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the room,
clashing the door behind him.
I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and had gone
out with him.
The room seemed to become dark.