When I awoke next morning in "Mary O'Neill's little room," with its
odour of clean white linen and sweet-smelling scraas, the sun was
shining in at the half-open window, birds were singing, cattle were
lowing, young lambs were bleating, a crow was cawing its way across the
sky, and under the sounds of the land there was a far-off murmur of the
sea.
Through the floor (unceiled beneath) I could hear the Doctor and
Christian Ann chortling away in low tones like two cheerful old
love-birds; and when I got up and looked out I saw the pink and white
blossom of the apple and plum trees, and smelt the smoke of burning peat
from the chimney, as well as the salt of the sea-weed from the shore.
Sister Mildred came to help me to dress, and when I went downstairs to
the sweet kitchen-parlour, feeling so strong and fresh, Christian Ann,
who was tossing an oat-cake she was baking on the griddle, cried to me,
as to a child:
"Come your ways, _villish_; you know the house."
And when I stepped over the rag-work hearthrug and sat in the
"elbow-chair" in the _chiollagh_, under the silver bowls that stood on
the high mantelpiece, she cried again, as if addressing the universe in
general, for there was nobody else in the room:
"Look at that now! She's been out in the big world, and seen great
wonders, and a power of people I'll go bail, but there she is, as nice
and comfortable as if she had never been away!"
Sister Mildred came down next; and then the old doctor, who had been
watching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old people's
bedroom after all and had put up at the "Plough"), came in, saying:
"The boy's late, mother--what's doing on him, I wonder?"
We waited awhile longer, and then sat down to breakfast. Oh, the homely
beauty of that morning meal, with its porridge, its milk, its honey and
cakes, its butter like gold, and its eggs like cream!
In spite of Sister Mildred's protests Christian Ann stood and served,
and I will not say that for me there was not a startling delight in
being waited upon once more, being asked what I would like, and getting
it, giving orders and being obeyed--me, me, me!
At length in the exercise of my authority I insisted on Christian Ann
sitting down too, which she did, though she didn't eat, but went on
talking in her dear, simple, delicious way.
It was always about Martin, and the best of it was about her beautiful
faith that he was still alive when the report came that he had been lost
at sea.
What? Her son dying like that, and she old and the sun going down on
her? Never! Newspapers? Chut, who cared what people put in the papers?
If Martin had really been lost, wouldn't _she_ have known it--having
borne him on her bosom ("a middling hard birth, too"), and being the
first to hear his living voice in the world?
So while people thought she was growing "weak in her intellects," she
had clung to the belief that her beloved son would come back to her. And
behold! one dark night in winter, when she was sitting in the
_chiollagh_ alone, and the wind was loud in the trees, and the doctor
upstairs was calling on her to come to bed ("you're wearing yourself
away, woman"), she heard a sneck of the garden gate and a step on the
gravel path, and it was old Tommy the Mate, who without waiting for her
to open the door let a great yell out of him through the window that a
"talegraf" had come to say her boy was safe.
Father Dan looked in after mass, in his biretta and faded cassock (the
same, I do declare, that he had worn when I was a child), and then
Martin himself came swinging up, with his big voice, like a shout from
the quarter-deck.
"Helloa! Stunning morning, isn't it?"
It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his mother, though
there was not too much reverence in his teasing, and hardly more love
than license.
When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house, and
said she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was ready to
settle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have to go back to
London presently, she cried:
"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been away, it's
witched they are--longing and longing to go back again. What's there in
London that's wanting him?"
Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud lift of
his old head and a wink at Father Dan, said:
"Who knows? Perhaps it's the King that's wanting him, woman."
"The King?" cried Christian Ann. "He's got a bonny son of his own,
they're telling me, so what for should he be wanting mine?"
"Mary," said. Martin, as soon as he could speak for laughing, "do you
want a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust but I might
give her away."
"Cuff him, Mrs. Conrad," cried Father Dan. "Cuff him, the young rascal!
He may be a big man in the great world over the water, but he mustn't
come here expecting his mother and his old priest to worship him."
How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was doing
most, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in all my life
before.
Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke, and Sister
Mildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann took up her
knitting, sat by my side, and told me the "newses" of home--sad news,
most of it, about my father, God pity him, and how his great schemes for
"galvanising the old island into life" had gone down to failure and
fatuity, sending some to the asylum and some to the graveyard, and
certain of the managers of corporations and banks to gaol.
My father himself had escaped prosecution; but he was supposed to be a
ruined man, dying of cancer, and had gone to live in his mother's old
cottage on the curragh, with only Nessy MacLeod to care for him--having
left the Big House to Aunt Bridget and cousin Betsy, who declared (so I
gathered or guessed) that I had disgraced their name and should never
look on their faces again.
"But dear heart alive, that won't cut much ice, will it?" said Christian
Ann, catching a word of Martin's.
Later in the day, being alone with the old doctor. I heard something of
my husband also--that he had applied (according to the laws of Ellan)
for an Act of Divorce, and that our insular legislature was likely to
grant it.
Still later, having walked out into the garden, where the bluebells were
in bloom, I, too, heard the sneck of the gate, and it was old Tommy
again, who (having been up to the "Plough" to "put a sight on himself")
had come round to welcome me as well--a little older, a little feebler,
"tacking a bit," as he said, with "romps in his fetlock joints," but
feeling "well tremenjus."
He had brought the "full of his coat-pockets" of lobsters and crabs for
me ("wonderful good for invalids, missie") and the "full of his mouth"
of the doings at Castle Raa, which he had left immediately after
myself--Price also, neither of them being willing to stay with a master
who had "the rough word" for everybody, and a "misthress" who had "the
black curse on her" that would "carry her naked sowl to hell."
"I wouldn't be gardener there, after the lil missie had gone . . . no,
not for the Bank of Ellan and it full of goold."
What a happy, happy day that was! There was many another day like it,
too, during the sweet time following, when spring was smiling once more
upon earth and man, and body and soul in myself were undergoing a
resurrection no less marvellous.
After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able to take
walks with Martin--through the leafy lanes with the golden gorse on the
high turf hedges and its nutty odour in the air, as far, sometimes, as
to the shore, where we talked about "asploring" or perhaps (without
speaking at all) looked into each other's eyes and laughed.
There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation from my
child, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in my own
position which the presence of my baby would make acute (setting all the
evil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I grew stronger, I
yearned for my little treasure.
The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage and
asked Martin if I might have my precious darling back.
"Girlie?" he cried. "Certainly you may. You are well enough now, so why
shouldn't you? I'm going to London on Exploration business soon, and
I'll bring her home with me."
But when he was gone (Mildred went with him) I was still confronted by
one cause of anxiety--Christian Ann. I could not even be sure she knew
of the existence of my child, still less that Martin intended to fetch
her.
So once more I took my heart in both hands, and while we sat together in
the garden, with the sunlight pouring through the trees, Christian Ann
knitting and I pretending to read, I told her all.
She knew everything already, the dear old thing, and had only been
waiting for me to speak. After dropping a good many stitches she said:
"The world will talk, and dear heart knows what Father Dan himself will
say. But blood's thicker than water even if it's holy water, and she's
my own child's child, God bless her!"
After that we had such delicious times together, preparing for the
little stranger who was to come--cutting up blankets and sheets, and
smuggling down from the "loft" to "Mary O'Neill's room" the wooden
cradle which had once been Martin's, and covering it with bows and
ribbons.
We kept the old doctor in the dark (pretended we did) and when he
wondered "what all the fuss was about," and if "the island expected a
visit from the Queen," we told him (Christian Ann did) to "ask us no
questions and we'd tell no lies."
What children we were, we two mothers, the old one and the young one! I
used to hint, with an air of great mystery, that my baby had "somebody's
eyes," and then the dear simple old thing would say:
"Somebody's eyes, has she? Well, well! Think of that, now!"
But Christian Ann, from the lofty eminence of the motherhood of one
child twenty-five years before, was my general guide and counsellor,
answering all my foolish questions when I counted up baby's age (eleven
months now) and wondered if she could walk and talk by this time, how
many of her little teeth should have come and whether she could remember
me.
As the time approached for Martin's return our childishness increased,
and on the last day of all we carried on such a game together as must
have made the very Saints themselves look down on us and laugh.
Before I opened my eyes in the morning I was saying to myself, "Now
they're on their way to Euston," and every time I heard the clock strike
I was thinking, "Now they're in the train," or "Now they're at
Liverpool," or "Now they're on the steamer"; but all the while I sang
"Sally" and other nonsense, and pretended to be as happy as the day was
long.
Christian Ann was even more excited than myself; and though she was
always reproving me for my nervousness and telling me to be composed, I
saw her put the kettle instead of the tea-pot on to the tablecloth, and
the porridge-stick into the fire in place of the tongs.
Towards evening, when Martin was due, I had reduced myself to such a
state of weakness that Christian Ann wanted to put me to bed; but
sitting down in the _chiollagh_, and watching the road from the
imprisonment of the "elbow-chair," I saw at last the two big white eyes
of the automobile wheeling round in the dusk by the gate of my father's
house.
A few minutes afterwards Martin came sweeping into the kitchen with a
nice-looking nurse behind him, carrying my darling at her breast.
She was asleep, but the light of the fire soon wakened her, and then a
strange thing happened.
I had risen from my seat, and Christian Ann had come hurrying up, and we
two women were standing about baby, both ready to clutch at her, when
she blinked her blue eyes and looked at us, and then held out her arms
to her grandmother!
That nearly broke my heart for a moment (though now I thank the Lord for
it), but it raised Christian Ann into the seventh heaven of rapture.
"Did you see that now?" she cried, clasping my baby to her bosom--her
eyes glistening as with sunshine, though her cheeks were slushed as with
rain.
I got my treasure to myself at last (Christian Ann having to show the
nurse up to her bedroom), and then, being alone with Martin, I did not
care, in the intoxication of my happiness, how silly I was in my praise
of her.
"Isn't she a little fairy, a little angel, a little cherub?" I cried.
"And that nasty, nasty birthmark quite, quite gone."
The ugly word had slipped out unawares, but Martin had caught it, and
though I tried to make light of it, he gave me no peace until I had told
him what it meant--with all the humiliating story of my last night at
Castle Raa and the blow my husband had struck me.
"But that's all over now," I said.
"Is it? By the Lord God I swear it isn't, though!" said Martin, and his
face was so fierce that it made me afraid.
But just at that moment Christian Ann came downstairs, and the old
doctor returned from his rounds, and then Tommy the Mate looked in on
his way to the "Plough," and hinting at my going to church again some
day, gave it as his opinion that if I put the "boght mulish" under my
"perricut" (our old island custom for legitimising children) "the Bishop
himself couldn't say nothin' against it"-at which Martin laughed so much
that I thought he had forgotten his vow about my husband.