"Hush! Isn't that Mary!"
"Aw, yes, the poor _veg veen_," said a sad voice. It was Christian
Ann's. At the bottom of her heart I shall always be the child who "sang
carvals to her door."
What a wonderful day! I shall not sleep a wink to-night, though.
To-morrow I must tell him.
* * * * *
JULY 13. I intended to tell Martin this morning, but I really couldn't.
I was going downstairs to breakfast, holding on to the bannisters at one
side and using nurse's shoulder as my other crutch, when I saw the
brightest picture I have ever beheld. Baby and Martin were on hands and
knees on the rag-work hearthrug, face to face--Martin calling her to
come, Isabel lifting up her little head to him, like a fledgling in a
nest, and both laughing with that gurgling sound as of water bubbling
out of a bottle.
This sight broke all the breath out of me at the very first moment. And
when Martin, after putting me into my place in the _chiollagh_, plunged
immediately into a rapturous account of his preparations for our
departure--how we were to be married by special license at the High
Bailiff's on the tenth (if that date would do), how I was to rest a day
and then travel up to London on the twelfth, and then rest other four
days (during which warm clothes could be bought for me), and sail by the
_Orient_ on the sixteenth--I could not find it in my heart to tell him
then of the inexorable fate that confronted us.
It was cowardice, I knew, and sooner or later I should have to pay for
it. But when he went on to talk about baby, and appealed to his mother
to say if she wouldn't look after Girlie when I was gone, and Christian
Ann (in such a different tone) said Yes, she would look after Girlie
when I was gone, I decided that I dared not tell him at all--I would die
rather than do so.
The end of it all is that I have arranged with Christian Ann, the old
doctor, and Father Dan that Time and Martin's own observation are to
tell him what is going to happen, and none of us are to say anything
about it.
What a deceiver I am, though! I put it all down to my unselfish love for
Martin. It would be such a blow to him--disturbing his plans, upsetting
everything, perhaps causing him to postpone his Expedition, or even to
abandon it altogether. "Let the truth fall soft on him. He'll see it
soon enough. Don't let us be cruel."
The dear sweet, unsuspecting old darlings have taken it all in--all my
vain and cowardly selfishness. I am to play the part of pretending to
fall in with Martin's plans, and they are to stand by and say nothing.
Can I do it? I wonder, I wonder!
* * * * *
JULY 15. I am becoming quite a great actress! It's astonishing to see
how I develop my deceptions under all sorts of veils and disguises.
Martin told me to-day that he had given up the idea of leaving me at
Wellington and had determined to take me on to Winter Quarters, having
met, on the way to Windsor, some great specialist in my kind of malady
(I wonder how much he knows of it), who declared that the climate of the
Antarctic would act on me like magic.
Such glorious sunshine in summer! Such crisp, dry, stimulating air! New
life with every breath! Such a stunning little house, too, so cosy and
comfortable! And then the men whom he would leave behind while he
slipped down South--they would worship me!
"How splendid! How glorious!" I cried. "How delightful to be mistress
over a houseful of big, hungry, healthy boys, who come in out of the
snow and want to eat up everything!"
Sometimes I feel myself being carried away by my own acting, and then I
see the others (Christian Ann and the old doctor and Father Dan)
dropping their heads or stealing out of the room.
I wish I were not so weak. I feel no pain whatever. Only this
temperature during the nights and the ever-deepening exhaustion in the
mornings.
* * * * *
JULY 16. I am keeping it up! To-day I was alone with Martin for a long
hour in the garden-house. Weather soft and beautiful, the heavens blue,
and gleams of sunshine coming through the trellis-work.
Merely to sit beside my darling with his odour of health is to feel a
flood of bodily strength coursing through me, enough to make me forget
that I am a frail thing myself, who could be blown away by a puff of
wind. But to hear him talk on his own subject is to be lifted up to the
highest reaches of the soul.
I always say there is a dumb poet in every explorer; but the poet wasn't
dumb to-day when Martin talked about the cyclone or anticyclone, or
whatever it is which covers the region of the South Pole like a cap, and
determines the weather of a great part of the habitable globe.
"We are going to take from God his word and pass it on to the world," he
said.
After that he made reference (for the first time since his return) to
the difficulties of our position, saying what a glorious thing it would
be to escape to that great free region from the world of civilisation,
with its effete laws and worn-out creeds which enslave humanity.
"Only a month to-day until we start, and you'll be well enough to travel
then, dearest."
"Yes, yes, only a month to-day, and I shall be well enough then,
dearest."
Oh, Mary O'Neill! How much longer will you be able to keep it up, dear?
* * * * *
JULY 17. Martin brought the proofs of his new book from London, and
to-day in the summer-house (bluebells paling out and hanging their
heads, but the air full of the odour of fruit trees) he and Dr.
O'Sullivan and I have been correcting "galleys"--the doctor reading
aloud, Martin smoking his briar-root pipe, and I (in a crater of
cushions) supposed to be sitting as judge and jury.
Such simple, straight, natural writing! There may have been a thousand
errors but my ears heard none of them. The breathless bits about the
moments when death was near; the humorous bits about patching the tent
with the tails of their shirts when an overturned lamp burnt a hole in
the canvas--this was all I was conscious of until I was startled by the
sound of a sepulchral voice, groaning out "Oh Lord a-massy me!" and by
the sight of a Glengarry cap over the top of the fuchsia hedge. Old
Tommy was listening from the road.
We sat late over our proofs and then, the dew having begun to fall,
Martin said he must carry me indoors lest my feet should get wet--which
he did, with the result that, remembering what had happened on our first
evening at Castle Raa, I had a pretty fit of hysterics as soon as we
reached the house.
"Let's skip, Commanther," was the next thing I heard, and then I was
helped upstairs to bed.
* * * * *
JULY 18. What a flirt I am becoming! Having conceived the idea that Dr.
O'Sullivan is a little wee bit in love with me too, I have been playing
him off against Martin.
It was so delicious (after all I have gone through) to have two
magnificent men, out of the heroic youth of the world, waiting hand and
foot on one little woman, that the feminine soul in me to-day couldn't
resist the temptation to an innocent effort at coquetry.
So before we began business on the proofs I told Martin that, if he was
determined to leave me behind at winter quarters while he went away to
the Pole, he must allow Dr. O'Sullivan to remain behind to take care of
me.
Of course the doctor rose to my bait like a dear, crying:
"He will too--by St. Patrick and St. Thomas he will, and a mighty proud
man he'll be entirely. . . ."
But good gracious! A momentary shadow passed over Martin's face, then
came one of his big broad smiles, then out shot his clinched fist, and
. . . the poor doctor and his garden seat were rolling over each other on
the grass.
However, we got through without bloodshed, and did good day's work on
the book.
I must not write any more. I have always written in my own book at
night, when I haven't been able to get any kind of Christian sleep; but
I'm weaker now, so must stop, lest I shouldn't have strength enough for
Martin's.
* * * * *
JULY 20. Oh dear! I am dragging all these other poor dears into my
deceptions. Christian Ann does not mind what lies, or half-lies, she has
to tell in order to save pain to her beloved son. But the old doctor!
And Father Dan!
To-day itself, as Martin's mother would say, I had to make my poor old
priest into a shocking story-teller.
I developed a cough a few weeks ago, and though it is not really of much
account I have been struggling to smother it while Martin has been
about, knowing he is a doctor himself, and fearing his ear might detect
the note.
But this afternoon (whether a little damp, with a soft patter of sweet
rain on the trees and the bushes) I had a rather bad bout, at which
Martin's face looked grave, until I laughed and said:
"It's nothing! I've had this sort of cough every summer since I was
born--haven't I, Father Dan?"
"Ye-es."
I shall have to remember that in my next confession, but what Father Dan
is to do I really don't know.
* * * * *
JULY 21. I have been rather down to-day about a newspaper that came to
me anonymously from Paris, with a report marked for my special
delectation.
"FASHIONABLE MARRIAGE OF AN ENGLISH PEER AND AN AMERICAN HEIRESS."
My husband's and Alma's! It took place at the American Embassy, and was
attended by great numbers of smart people. There was a long account of
the grandeur of the bride's dress and of the splendour of the
bridegroom's presents. They have taken an apartment on the Champs
Elysées and will spend most of the year in Paris.
Ah well, why should I trouble about a matter that so little concerns me?
Alma is still beautiful; she will be surrounded by admirers; her salon
will be frequented by the fashionable parasites of Europe and America.
As for my husband, the straw-fire of his wife's passion for him will
soon burn out, especially now that she has gained what she wanted--his
name, his title.
* * * * *
Martin carried me upstairs to bed to-night. I was really feeling weaker
than usual, but we made a great game of it. Nurse went first, behind a
mountain of pillows; Martin and I came next, with his arms about my body
and mine around his neck; and Dr. O'Sullivan last, carrying two tall
brass candlesticks.
How we laughed! We all laughed together, as if trying to see which of us
could laugh the loudest. Only Christian Ann looked serious, standing at
the bottom of the stairs, nursing baby in her nightdress.
It is three o'clock in the morning as I write, and I can hear our
laughter still--only it sounds like sobbing now.
* * * * *
JULY 22. Have heard something to-day that has taken all the warmth of
life out of me. It is about my father, whom the old doctor still
attends. Having been told of my husband's marriage he has announced his
intention of claiming my child if anything happens to me!
What his object may be I do not know. He cannot be thinking of
establishing a claim to my husband's title--Isabel being a girl.
Remembering something his lawyer said about the marriage settlement when
I consulted him on the subject of divorce, I can only assume that (now
he is poor) he is trying to recover the inheritance he settled on my
husband.
It frightens me--raising my old nightmare of a lawsuit about the
legitimacy of my child. I want to speak to Martin about it. Yet how can
I do so without telling him the truth which I have been struggling so
hard to conceal?
* * * * *
JULY 23. Oh, Mary O'Neill, what are you coming to?
I told Martin about father's threat, only I gave it another colour. He
had heard of the Reverend Mother's visit, so I said the rumour had
reached my father that I intended to enter a convent, and he had
declared that, if I did so, he would claim my child from Christian Ann,
being its nearest blood relation.
"Can he do so--when I am . . . when we are gone?" I asked.
I thought Martin's strong face looked sterner than I had ever seen it.
He made a vague reply and left me soon afterwards on some sort of
excuse.
About an hour later he came back to carry me upstairs, and just as he
was setting me down, and Christian Ann was coming in with the candles,
he whispered:
"Don't worry about Girlie. I've settled that matter, I'm thinking."
What has he done, I wonder?