JULY 6. I feel so much better to-day. I hardly know what reaction of my
whole being, physical and spiritual, has set in since yesterday, but my
heart is lighter than for a long time, and sleep, which I had come to
look upon as a lost blessing, came to me last night for four solid
hours--beautiful and untroubled as a child's.
* * * * *
JULY 8. Martin writes that he expects to be here on the 12th. Letter
full of joyous spirits. "Lots to tell you when I reach home, dearest."
Strange! No mortal can imagine how anxious I am to get him back, yet I
almost dread his coming. When he was away before, Time could not go fast
enough for me. Now it is going too fast. I know what that means--the
story I have to tell. How am I to tell it?
* * * * *
JULY 10. Only two days more and Martin will be here. Of course I must be
up when he arrives. Nurse says No, but I say Yes. To be in bed when he
comes would be too much a shock for him.
"Servants are such domineering tyrants," says Christian Ann, who never
had but one, and "the strange woman" was such a phantom in the house
that the poor mistress was grateful to God when Hollantide came round
and the ghost walked away of itself. My nurse is a dear, though. How
glad I am now that I persuaded Christian Ann to let her stay.
* * * * *
JULY 12. Martin comes to-day, and the old doctor (with such a proud and
stately step) has gone off to Blackwater to meet him. I am terribly weak
(no pain whatever), but perfectly resolute on dressing and going
downstairs towards tea-time. I shall wear a white tea-gown, which Sister
Mildred gave me in London. Martin likes me best in white.
* * * * *
LATER. My Martin has come! We had counted it up that travelling across
the island by motor-car he would arrive at five, so I was dressed and
downstairs by four, sitting in the _chiollagh_ and watching the road
through the window opposite. But he was half an hour late, and Christian
Ann and I were in such a fever that anybody would have believed it to be
half a century and that the world had stood still.
We might have known what would happen. At Blackwater "the boys" (the
same that "got up the spree" when Martin went away) had insisted on a
demonstration. Then, on reaching our village, Martin had got down and
shaken hands with everybody--the joiner and the grocer and the
blacksmith and the widow who keeps the corner shop--so that it had taken
him a quarter of an hour to get through, amid a general chorus of "The
boy he is, though!" and "No pride at all at all!"
After that he drove home at top speed, and my quick ears caught the
musical hum of the motor as it crossed the bridge. Good gracious, what
excitement!
"Quick nurse, help me to the gate."
I got there just in time to hear a shout, and to see a precipitate bound
out of the car and then . . . what an embrace!
It is such a good thing my Martin is a big, brawny person, for I don't
know how I should have got back to the house, being so weak and
breathless just then, if his strong arm had not been round my waist.
Dr. O'Sullivan had come too, looking as gay as a humming-bird, and after
I had finished with Martin I kissed him also (having such a largesse of
affection to distribute generally), whereupon he blushed like a boy,
bless him, and stammered out something about St. Patrick and St. Thomas,
and how he wouldn't have believed anybody who had said there was
anything so sweet, etc.
Martin said I was looking so well, and he, too, declared he wouldn't
have believed any man who had sworn I could have looked so much better
in the time.
My nervous thermometer must have gone up by leaps and bounds during the
next hour, for immediately after tea the old doctor ordered me back to
bed, though I refused to go until he had faithfully promised that the
door to the staircase should be kept open, so that I could hear what was
said downstairs.
What lots of fun they had there! Half the parish must have come in "to
put a sight" on Martin after his investiture, including old Tommy the
Mate, who told everybody over and over again that he had "known the lad
since he was a lump" and "him and me are same as brothers."
The old doctor's stately pride must have been something to see. It was
"Sir Martin" here and "Sir Martin" there, until I could have cried to
hear him. I felt just as foolish myself, too, for though I cannot
remember that my pulse gave one extra beat when they made me "your
ladyship," now that Martin has become. . . . But that's what we women
are, you see!
At length Martin's big voice came up clear above the rest, and then the
talk was about the visit to Windsor. Christian Ann wanted to know if he
wasn't "freckened" to be there, "not being used of Kings," whereupon he
cried:
"What! Frightened of another man--and a stunning good one, too!"
And then came a story of how the King had asked if he hadn't been in
fear of icebergs, and how he had answered No, you could strike more of
them in a day in London (meaning icy-hearted people) than in a life-time
in the Antarctic.