JULY 25. The old doctor brought me such sad and startling news to-day.
My poor father is dead--died yesterday, after an operation which he had
deferred too long, refusing to believe it necessary.
The dreadful fact has hitherto been kept secret not only from me but
from everybody, out of fear of legal proceedings arising from the
failure of banks, &c., which has brought the whole island to the verge
of bankruptcy.
He was buried this morning at old St. Mary's--very early, almost before
daybreak, to suit the convenience of the Bishop, who wished to catch the
first steamer _en route_ for Rome.
As a consequence of these strange arrangements, and the secrecy that has
surrounded my father's life of late, people are saying that he is not
dead at all, that in order to avoid prosecution he has escaped from the
island (going off with the Bishop in a sort of disguise), and that the
coffin put into the grave this morning did not contain a human body.
"But that's all wrong," said the old doctor. "Your father is really dead
and buried, and the strange man who went away with the Bishop was the
London surgeon who performed the operation."
I can hardly realise it--that the strong, stalwart being, the stern old
lion whose heavy foot, tramping through my poor mother's room, used to
make the very house shake, is gone.
He died as he had lived, it seems. To the last self-centred, inflexible,
domineering--a peasant yet a great man (if greatness is to be measured
by power), ranking, I think, in his own little scene of life with the
tragic figures of history.
I have spent the day in bitter grief. Ever since I was a child there has
been a dark shadow between my father and me. He was like a beetling
mountain, always hanging over my head. I wonder whether he wished to see
me at the end. Perhaps he did, and was over-persuaded by the cold and
savourless nature of Nessy MacLeod, who is giving it out, I hear, that
grief and shame for me killed him.
People will say he was a vulgar parvenu, a sycophant, a snob--heaven
knows what. All wrong! For the true reading of his character one has to
go back to the day when he was a ragged boy and the liveried coachman of
the "bad Lord Raa" lashed at his mother on the road, and he swore that
when he was a man she should have a carriage of her own, and then
"nobody should never lash her."
He found Gessler's cap in the market-place and was no more willing than
Tell to bend the knee to it.
My poor father! He did wrong to use another life, another soul, for
either his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will be with
him, and if he was the first cause of making my life what it has been, I
send after him (I almost tremble to say it) if not my love, my
forgiveness.
* * * * *
JULY 26. I begin to realise that after all I was not romancing when I
told the old dears that Martin and his schemes would collapse if I
failed him. Poor boy, he is always talking as it everything depended
upon me. It is utterly frightening to think what would happen to the
Expedition if he thought I could not sail with him on the sixteenth.
Martin is not one of the men who weep for their wives as if the sun had
suffered eclipse, and then marry again before their graves are green.
So, having begun on my great scheme of pretending that I am getting
better every day, and shall be "ready to go, never fear," I have to keep
it up.
I begin to suspect, though, that I am not such a wonderful actress after
all. Sometimes in the midst of my raptures I see him looking at me
uneasily as if he were conscious of a certain effort. At such moments I
have to avoid his eyes lest anything should happen, for my great love
seems to be always lying in wait to break down my make-believe.
To-day (though I had resolved not to give way to tears) when he was
talking about the voyage out, and how it would "set me up" and how the
invigorating air of the Antarctic would "make another woman of me," I
cried:
"How splendid! How glorious!"
"Then why are you crying?" he asked.
"Oh, good gracious, that's nothing--for _me_," I answered.
But if I am throwing dust in Martin's eyes I am deceiving nobody else,
it seems. To-night after he and Dr. O'Sullivan had gone back to the
"Plough," Father Dan came in to ask Christian Ann how she found me, and
being answered rather sadly, I heard him say:
"_Ugh cha nee!_ [Woe is me!] What is life? It is even a vapour which
appeareth for a little while and then vanisheth away."
And half an hour later, when old Tommy came to bring me some lobsters
(he still declares they are the only food for invalids) and to ask
"how's the lil woman now?" I heard him moaning, as he was going out:
"There'll be no shelter for her this voyage, the _vogh!_ She'll carry
the sea in with her to the Head, I'm thinking."
* * * * *
JULY 27. I _must_ keep it up--I must, I must! To allow Martin's hopes
and dreams to be broken in upon now would be enough to kill me outright.
I don't want to be unkind, but some explorers leave the impression that
their highest impulse is the praise of achievement, and once they have
done something all they've got to do next is to stay at home and talk
about it. Martin is not like that. Exploration is a passion with him.
The "lure of the little voices" and the "call of the Unknown" have been
with him from the beginning, and they will be with him to the end.
I cannot possibly think of Martin dying in bed, and being laid to rest
in the green peace of English earth--dear and sweet as that is to tamer
natures, mine for instance. I can only think of that wild heroic soul
going up to God from the broad white wilderness of the stormy South, and
leaving his body under heaving hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing a
requiem over his grave.
Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing heart
make it impossible? Never, never, never!
Moral--I'm going to get up every day--whatever my nurse may say.
* * * * *
JULY 28. I was rocking baby to sleep this afternoon when Christian Ann,
who was spinning by the fire, told me of a quarrel between Aunt Bridget
and Nessy MacLeod.
It seems that Nessy (who says she was married to my father immediately
before the operation) claims to be the heiress of all that is left, and
as the estate includes the Big House she is "putting the law on" Aunt
Bridget to obtain possession.
Poor Aunt Bridget! What a pitiful end to all her scheming for Betsy
Beauty, all her cruelties to my long-suffering mother, all her
treatment of me--to be turned out of doors by her own step-daughter!
When old Tommy heard of the lawsuit, he said:
"Chut! Sarves her right, I say! It's the black life the Big Woman lived
before, and it's the black life she'll be living now, and her growing
old, and the Death looking in on her."
* * * * *
JULY 29. We have finished the proofs to-day and Dr. O'Sullivan has gone
back with them. I thought he looked rather _wae_ when he came to say
good-bye to me, and though he made a great deal of noise his voice was
husky when (swearing by his favourite Saints) he talked about "returning
for the tenth with all the boys, including Treacle."
Of course that was nonsense about his being in love with me. But I'm
sure he loves me all the same--many, many people love me. I don't know
what I've done to deserve all this love. I have had a great deal of love
in my life now that I come to think of it.
We worked hard over the last of the proofs, and I suppose I was tired at
the end of them, for when Martin carried me upstairs to-night there was
less laughter than usual, and I thought he looked serious as he set me
down by the bed.
I bantered him about that ("A penny for your thoughts, mister"), but
towards midnight the truth flashed upon me--I am becoming thinner and
therefore lighter every day, and he is beginning to notice it.
Moral--I must try to walk upstairs in future.
* * * * *
JULY 30. Ah, me! it looks as if it were going to be a race between me
and the Expedition--which shall come off first--and sometimes I am
afraid I am going to be the loser!
Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth--only seventeen days! I am
expected to be married on the tenth--only eleven! Oh, Mary O'Neill, what
a strange contradictory war you are waging! Look straight before you,
dear, and don't be afraid.
I had a letter from the Reverend Mother this evening. She is crossing
from Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she intended, so I suppose
Father Dan must have sent for her.
I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together. A struggle
between my religion and my love would he more than I could bear now.
* * * * *
JULY 31. When I awoke this morning very late (I had slept after
daybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who should
come into the room but the doctor from Blackwater!
He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again, so he had
taken me at my word.
I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that he was
utterly astonished--couldn't understand how I came to be alive--and said
he would never again deny the truth of the old saying about dying of a
broken heart, because I was clearly living by virtue of a whole one.
I made pretence of wanting something in order to get nurse out of the
room, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and whispered "_When?_"
He wasn't for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of God which
no science could reckon with, but at last I got a word out of him which
made me happy, or at least content.
Perhaps it's sad, but many things look brighter that are far more
sorrowful--dying of a broken heart, for example, and (whatever else is
amiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed, gloriously healed, after
its bruises, so thank God for that, anyway!
* * * * *
Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream! I thought my
darling mother came to me. "You're cold, my child," she said, and then
covered me up in the bedclothes. I talked about leaving my baby, and she
said she had had to do the same--leaving me. "That's what we mothers
come to--so many of us--but heaven is over all," she whispered.
* * * * *
AUGUST 1. I really cannot understand myself, so it isn't a matter for
much surprise if nobody else understands me. In spite of what the
strange doctor said yesterday I dressed up grandly to-day, not only in
my tea-gown, but some beautiful old white Irish lace which nurse lent me
to wrap about my throat.
I think the effect was rather good, and when I went downstairs leaning
on nurse's shoulder, there was Martin waiting for me, and though he did
not speak (couldn't perhaps), the look that came into his blue eyes was
the same as on that last night at Castle Raa when he said something
about a silvery fir-tree with its dark head against the sky.
Oh, my own darling, I could wish to live for you, such as I am, if I
could be of any use, if I would not be a hindrance rather than a help,
if our union were right, if, in short, God Himself had not already
answered to all such questionings and beseechings, His great;
unalterable, irrevocable No!
* * * * *
AUGUST 2. The Reverend Mother, who arrived in the island last night, has
been with me all day. I think she _knows_, for she has said nothing more
about the convent--only (with her eyes so soft and tender) that she
intends to remain with me a little while, having need of rest herself.
To my surprise and joy, Martin and she have got on famously. This
evening she told me that, in spite of all (I know what she meant by
that), she is willing to believe that he is a true man, and,
notwithstanding his unhappy opinions about the Church, a Christian
gentleman.
Such a touching thing happened to-day. We were all sitting in the
garden, (sun warm, light breeze off the sea, ripe corn chattering in the
field opposite), when I felt a tugging at my skirts, and who should it
be but Isabel, who had been crawling along the dry grass plucking
daisies, and now, dragging herself up to my side, emptied them into my
lap.
No, I will not give way to tears any more as long as I live, yet it
rather "touches me up," as Martin says, to see how one's vainest dreams
seem to come to pass.
I don't know if Martin thought I was going to break down, but he rattled
away about Girlie having two other mothers now--Grandma, who would keep
her while we were down South, and the Reverend Mother, who would take
her to school when she was old enough.
So there's nothing more to fear about baby.
But what about Martin himself? Am I dealing fairly in allowing him to go
on with his preparations? isn't it a kind of cruelty not to tell him the
truth?
This problem is preying on my mind. If I could only get some real sleep
perhaps I could solve it.
* * * * *
AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough; nothing but
exhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was growing more than
ever like my mother--that "sweet saint whom the Lord has made his own."
I know what he means--like her as she was at the last.
My poor old priest is such a child! A good old man is always a child--a
woman can see through and through him.
Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel like baby
when she is tired after walking round the chairs and comes to be nursed.
What children we all are at the end--just children!
* * * * *
AUGUST 4. Father Dan came across, in breathless excitement to-day. It
seems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of some sort of
censure from Rome through his Bishop--about his toleration of me, I
suppose--but behold! it's the Bishop himself who has suffered censure,
having been sent into quarantine at one of the Roman Colleges and
forbidden to return to his diocese.
And now, lo! a large sum of money comes from Rome for the poor of Ellan,
to be distributed by Father Dan!
I think I know whose money it is that has been returned; but the dear
Father suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a general
thanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to old St. Mary's
and then Rosary and Benediction.
It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my last day
in Ellan, after my marriage, but before my departure.
How God governs everything!
* * * * *
AUGUST 6. It is really wrong of me to allow Martin to go on. This
morning he told me he had bought the special license for our marriage,
and this evening he showed me our tickets for Sydney--two berths, first
cabin, steadiest part of the ship. Oh, my dear heart, if you only knew
that I have had my ticket these many days, and that it is to take me out
first on the Great Expedition--to the still bigger Unknown, the
Everlasting Sea, the Immeasurable Eternity!
I must be brave. Although I am a little cowardly sometimes, I _can_ be
brave.
I have definitely decided to-night that I will tell him. But how can I
look into his face and say. . . .
* * * * *
AUGUST 7. I have made up my mind to write to Martin. One can say things
so much easier in a letter--I can, anyway. Even my voice affects
me--swelling and falling when I am moved, like a billow on the ocean.
I find my writing cannot any longer be done in a sitting position in
bed, but I can prop my book on my breast and write lying down.