Another month passed, and then began the last and most important phase
of my too changeful story.
Every week Martin had been coming and going between Ellan and London,
occupied when he was away with the business of his next Expedition (for
which Parliament had voted a large sum), and when he was at home with
reports, diaries, charts, maps, and photographs toward a book he was
writing about his last one.
As for myself, I had been (or tried to think I had been) entirely happy.
With fresh air, new milk, a sweet bedroom, and above all, good and
tender nursing (God bless Christian Ann for all she did for me!), my
health had improved every day--or perhaps, by that heavenly hopefulness
which goes with certain maladies, it had seemed to me to do so.
Yet mine was a sort of twilight happiness, nevertheless. Though the sun
was always shining in my sky, it was frequently under eclipse. In spite
of the sheltered life I lived in that home of charity and love, I was
never entirely free from a certain indefinable uneasiness about my
position.
I was always conscious, too, that Martin's mother and father, not to
speak of Father Dan, were suffering from a similar feeling, for
sometimes when we talked about the future their looks would answer to my
thoughts, and it was just as if we were all silently waiting, waiting,
waiting for some event that was to justify and rehabilitate me.
It came at last--for me with a startling suddenness.
One morning, nurse being out on an errand and Christian Ann patting her
butter in the dairy, I was playing with baby on the rag-work hearthrug
when our village newsman came to the threshold of the open door.
"Take a _Times_," he said. "You might as well be out of the world,
ma'am, as not know what's going on in it."
I took one of his island newspapers, and after he had gone I casually
glanced at it.
But what a shock it gave me! The first heading that flew in my face
was--
"INSULAR DIVORCE BILL PASSED."
It was a report of the proceedings of the Supreme Court of our Ellan
legislature, which (notwithstanding the opposition of its ecclesiastical
members) had granted my husband's petition.
Perhaps I ought to have had a sense of immense relief. Or perhaps I
should have gone down on my knees there and then, and thanked God that
the miserable entanglement of the horrible marriage that had been forced
upon me was at last at an end.
But no, I had only one feeling as the newspaper fell from my
fingers--shame and humiliation, not for myself (for what did it matter
about me, anyway?), but for Martin, whose name, now so famous, I had,
through my husband's malice, been the means of dragging through the
dust.
I remember that I thought I should never be able to look into my
darling's face again, that when he came in the afternoon (as he always
did) I should have to run away from him, and that all that was left to
me was to hide myself and die.
But just as these wild thoughts were galloping through my brain I heard
the sneck of the garden gate, and almost before I was aware of what else
was happening Martin had come sweeping into the house like a rush of
wind, thrown his arms around me, and covered my face, my neck, and my
hands with kisses--never having done so before since I came to live at
his mother's home.
"Such news! Such news!" he cried. "We are free, free, free!"
Then, seeing the newspaper at my feet on the floor, he said:
"Ah, I see you know already. I told them to keep everything away from
you--all the miserable legal business. But no matter! It's over now. Of
course it's shocking--perfectly shocking--that that squirming worm,
after his gross infidelities, should have been able to do what he has
done. But what matter about that either? He has done just what we
wanted--what you couldn't do for yourself before I went away, your
conscience forbidding you. The barrier that has divided us is down . . .
now we can be married at any time."
I was so overcome by Martin's splendid courage, so afraid to believe
fully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long had come to me
at last, that for some time I could not speak. And when I did speak,
though my heart was clamouring loud, I only said:
"But do you really think that . . . that we can now be husband and
wife?"
"Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I do
think it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough, my poor
girl. But all that you have gone through has to be forgotten, and you
are never to look back again."
"Yes, yes, I know I should be happy, very happy," I said, "but what
about you?"
"Me?"
"I looked forward to being a help--at least not a trouble to you,
Martin."
"And so you will be. Why shouldn't you?"
"Martin," I said (I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't help doing
it), "wouldn't it injure you to marry me . . . being what I am now . . .
in the eyes of the world, I mean?"
He looked at me for a moment as if trying to catch my meaning, and then
snatched me still closer to his breast.
"Mary," he cried, "don't ask me to consider what the damnable
insincerities of society may say to a case like ours. If _you_ don't
care, then neither do I. And as for the world, by the Lord God I swear
that all I ask of it I am now holding in my arms."
That conquered me--poor trembling hypocrite that I was, praying with
all my soul that my objections would be overcome.
In another moment I had thrown my arms about my Martin's neck and kissed
and kissed him, feeling for the first time after my months and years of
fiery struggle that in the eyes of God and man I had a _right_ to do so.
And oh dear, oh dear! When Martin had gone back to his work, what
foolish rein I gave to my new-born rapture!
I picked baby up from the hearthrug and kissed her also, and then took
her into the dairy to be kissed by her grandmother, who must have
overheard what had passed between Martin and me, for I noticed that her
voice had suddenly become livelier and at least an octave higher.
Then, baby being sleepy, I took her upstairs for her morning nap, and
after leaning over her cradle, in the soft, damp, milk-like odour of her
sweet body and breath, I stood up before the glass and looked at my own
hot, tingling, blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
Oh, what gorgeous dreams of happiness came to me! I may have been the
unmarried mother of a child, but my girlhood--my lost girlhood--was
flowing back upon me. A vision of my marriage-day rose up before me and
I saw myself as a bride, in my bridal veil and blossoms.
How happy I was going to be! But indeed I felt just then as if I had
always been happy. It was almost as though some blessed stream of holy
water had washed my memory clean of all the soilure of my recent days in
London, for sure I am that if anybody had at that moment mentioned
Ilford and the East End, the bricklayer and the Jew, or spoken of the
maternity homes and the orphanages, I should have screamed.
Towards noon the old doctor came back from his morning rounds, and I
noticed that _his_ voice was pitched higher too. We never once spoke
about the great news, the great event, while we sat at table; but I
could not help noticing that we were all talking loud and fast and on
the top of each other, as if some dark cloud which had hovered over our
household had suddenly slid away.
After luncheon, nurse being back with baby, I went out for a walk alone,
feeling wonderfully well and light, and having two hours to wait for
Martin, who must be still pondering over his papers at the "Plough."
How beautiful was the day! How blue the sky! How bright the earth! How
joyous the air--so sweet and so full of song-birds!
I remember that I thought life had been so good to me that I ought to be
good to everybody else--especially to my father, from whom it seemed
wrong for a daughter to be estranged, whatever he was and whatever he
had done to her.
So I turned my face towards my poor grandmother's restored cottage on
the curragh, fully determined to be reconciled to my father; and I only
slackened my steps and gave up my purpose when I began to think of Nessy
MacLeod and how difficult (perhaps impossible) it might be to reach him.
Even then I faced about for a moment to the Big House with some vain
idea of making peace with Aunt Bridget and then slipping upstairs to my
mother's room--having such a sense of joyous purity that I wished to
breathe the sacred air my blessed saint had lived in.
But the end of it all was that I found myself on the steps of the
Presbytery, feeling breathlessly happy, and telling myself, with a
little access of pride in my own gratitude, that it was only right and
proper that I should bring my happiness where I had so often brought my
sorrow--to the dear priest who had been my friend since the day of my
birth and my darling mother's friend before.
Poor old Father Dan! How good I was going to be to him!