_August 9th_, 6 A.M.
MY OWN DARLING,--Strengthen yourself for what I am going to say. It will
be very hard for you--I know that, dear.
To-morrow we were to have gone to the High Bailiff; this day week we
were to have sailed for Sydney, and two months hence we were to have
reached Winter Quarters.
But I cannot go with you to the High Bailiff's; I cannot go with you to
Sydney; I cannot go with you to Winter Quarters; I cannot go anywhere
from here. It is impossible, quite impossible.
I have loved too much, dear, so the power of life is burnt out for me.
My great love--love for my mother, for my darling baby, and above all
for you--has consumed me and I cannot live much longer.
Forgive me for not telling you this before--for deceiving you by saying
that I was getting better and growing stronger when I knew I was not. I
used to think it was cowardice which kept me from telling you the truth,
but I see now that it was love, too.
I was so greedy of the happiness I have had since I came to this house
of love that I could not reconcile myself to the loss of it. You will
try to understand that (won't you, dear?), and so forgive me for keeping
you in the dark down to the very last moment.
This will be a great grief to you. I would die with a glad heart to save
you a moment's pain, yet I could not die at ease if I did not think you
would miss me and grieve for me. I like to think that in the time to
come people will say, "Once he loved Mary O'Neill, and now there is no
other woman in the world for him." I should not be a woman if I did not
feel like that--should I?
But don't grieve too much, dearest. Only think! If I had been strong and
had years and years still to live, what a life would have been before
me--before both of us.
We couldn't have lived apart, could we? And if we had married I should
never have been able to shake off the thought that the world, which
would always be opening its arms to you, did not want me. That would be
so, wouldn't it--after all I have gone through? The world never forgives
a woman for the injuries it inflicts on her itself, and I have had too
many wounds, darling, to stand by your side and be any help to you.
Oh, I know what you would say, dearest. "She gave up everything for love
of me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth and rank and
ease, and therefore I will choose her before everything else in the
world." But I know what would come to us in the end, dear, and I should
always feel that your love for me had dragged you down, closed many of
the doors of life to you. I should know that you were always hearing
behind you the echoing footsteps of my fate, and that is the only thing
I could not bear.
Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in this
world--the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can never be man
and wife, and there is no getting beyond that, is there?
Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you--that I think it a sin
to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it is
must know that I am doing no wrong.
And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to answer
to God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He will know
that, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were trying to control
my most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the right He gave me to be
mistress of myself and sovereign of my soul.
_You_ must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach yourself in any
way, for when we stand together before God's footstool He will see that
from the beginning I was yours and you were mine, and He will cover us
with the wings of His loving mercy.
Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what happened
afterwards--first in Ellan and then in London--as, in any sense, a
punishment. I have never done that at any time, and now I believe from
the bottom of my heart that, if I suffered while you were away, it was
not for my sin but my salvation.
Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage, and if
I had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my soul would
have shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the souls of so
many poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and degrading
husbands. But my soul has not died, dearest, and it is not dying,
whatever my poor body may do, so I thank my gracious God for the sweet
and pure and noble love that has kept it alive.
All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I took my
vow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took it, or under
whatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in heaven.
It cannot be for nothing, dear, that our blessed Lord made that stern
Commandment. The Church may have given a wrong interpretation to it--you
say it has, and I am too ignorant to answer you, even if I wished to,
which I don't. But I am sure my Lord foresaw all such mistakes, and all
the hardships that would come to many poor women (perhaps some men,
too), as well as the wreck the world might fall to for want of this
unyielding stay, when He issued his divine and irrevocable law that
never under any circumstances should marriage be broken.
Oh, I am sure of it, dear, quite sure, and before His unsearchable
wisdom I bow my head, although my heart is torn.
Yet think, darling, how light is the burden that is laid upon us!
Marriage vows are for this world only. The marriage law of the Church
which lasts as long as life does not go on one moment longer. The
instant death sets my body free, my soul may fly to where it belongs. If
I were going to live ten, twenty, thirty years, this might be cold
comfort, but I am not.
Then why should we be sorry? You cannot be mine in this life and I
cannot be yours, so Death comes in its mercy and majesty to unite us!
Our love will go far beyond life, and the moment the barrier of death is
passed our union will begin! And once it begins it will never end! So
Death is not really a separator, but a great uniter! Don't you see that,
dearest? One moment of parting--hardly a moment, perhaps--and then we
shall be together through all Eternity! How wonderful! How glorious! How
triumphant!
Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe that in
the other life I shall meet and know my dear ones who are in heaven.
More than that, I believe that the instant I pass from this life I shall
live with my dear ones who are still on earth. That is why I am willing
to go--because I am sure that the moment I draw my last breath I shall
be standing by your side.
So don't let there be any weeping for me, dear. "Nothing is here for
tears; nothing but well and fair." Always remember--love is immortal.
I will not say that I could not have wished to live a little longer--if
things had been otherwise with both of us. I should like to live to see
your book published and your work finished (I know it will be some day),
and baby grow up to be a good girl and a beautiful one too (for that's
something, isn't it?); and I should like to live a little longer for
another reason, a woman's reason--simply to be loved, and to be told
that I am loved, for though a woman may know that, she likes to hear it
said and is never tired of hearing it.
But things have gone against us, and it is almost sinfully ungrateful to
regret anything when we have so many reasons for thankfulness.
And then about Girlie--I used to think it would be terrible (for me, I
mean) to die before she could be old enough to have any clear memory of
her mother (such as I have of mine) to cherish and love--only the cold,
blank, unfilled by a face, which must be all that remains to most of
those whose parents passed away while they were children. But I am not
afraid of that now, because I know that in the future, when our little
girl asks about her mother, you will describe me to her as _you_ saw and
remember me--and that will be _so_ much sweeter and lovelier than I ever
was, and it will be _such_ a joy to think that my daughter sees me
through her father's eyes.
Besides, dearest, there is something still more thrilling--the thought
that Girlie may grow to be like me (like what you _think_ me), and that
in the time to come she may startle you with undescribable resemblances,
in her voice or smile, or laugh, to her mother in heaven, so that some
day, perhaps, years and years hence, when she is quite grown up, she may
touch your arm and you may turn quickly to look at her, and lo! it will
seem to you as if Mary herself (_your_ Mary) were by your side. Oh
Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?
Go on with your great work, dearest. Don't let it flag from any cold
feeling that I am lost to you. Whenever you think of me, say to
yourself, "Mary is here; Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot
quench it."
Did you ever read Browning? I have been doing so during the last few
days, nurse (she is quite a thoughtful woman) having lent me his last
volume. When I read the last lines of what is said to have been his last
poem I thought of you, dear:
"_No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
'Strive and thrive!' Cry 'Speed,--fight on, fare ever
There as here!'_"
I am going to get up again to-day, dear, having something to do that is
just a little important--to give you this manuscript book, in which I
have been writing every day (or rather every night since you found me in
London.)
You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no more on
that subject.
I am afraid you'll find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself;
but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one
does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls
there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of some women as well.
I once thought I could write a real book (you'll see what vain and
foolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to show what
a woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever, she is denied the
right God gave her of choosing the best for herself and her children.
There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring the
slumber of mankind, but the awakening will not be in my time certainly,
and perhaps not even in Girlie's.
And yet, why not?
Do you know, dearest, what it was in your wonderful book which thrilled
me most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you passed in the
Antarctic Ocean--five hundred feet above the surface of the sea and
therefore five hundred below it, going steadily on and on, against all
the force of tempestuous wind and wave, by power of the current
underneath.
Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that, dearest? So
perhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie than it has been for
me. And in any case, I shall always feel that, after all and in spite of
everything, it has been glorious to be a woman.
* * * * *
And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for a little
while, I want to write what I should like to say when I part from you
to-morrow if I did not know that something in my throat would choke me.
I want to tell you again that I love you dearly, that I have never loved
anybody but you, and that no marriage vows will keep me from loving you
to the last.
I want to thank you for the great, great love you have given me in
return--all the way back from the time when I was a child. Oh, my
dearest, may God for ever bless you for the sunshine you have brought
into my life--every single day of it, joyful days and sorrowful ones,
bright days and dark, but all shining with the glory of your love.
Never allow yourself to think that my life has not been a happy one.
Looking back on it now I feel as if I have always had happiness. And
when I have not had happiness I have had something far higher and
better--blessedness.
I have had _such_ joy in my life, dear--joy in the beauty of the world,
in the sunshine and the moon and the stars and the flowers and the songs
of the birds, and then (apart from the divine love that is too holy to
speak about) in my religion, in my beloved Church, in the love of my
dear mother and my sweet child, and above all--above all in _you_.
I feel a sense of sacred thankfulness to God for giving you to me, and
if it has not been for long in this life, it will be for ever in the
next.
So good-bye, my dearest me--_just for a little moment_! My dearest one,
Good-bye!