My darling was right. I had known all along, but I had been hoping
against hope--that the voyage would set her up, and the air of the
Antarctic cure her.
Then her cheerfulness never failed her, and when she looked at me with
her joyous eyes, and when her soft hand slipped into mine I forgot all
my fears, so the blow fell on me as suddenly as if I had never expected
it.
With a faint pathetic smile she gave me her book and I went back to my
room at the inn and read it. I read all night and far into the next
day--all her dear story, straight from her heart, written out in her
small delicate, beautiful characters, with scarcely an erasure.
No use saying what I thought or went through. So many things I had never
known before! Such love as I had never even dreamt of, and could never
repay her for now!
How my whole soul rebelled against the fate that had befallen my dear
one! If I have since come to share, however reluctantly, her sweet
resignation, to bow my head stubbornly where she bowed hers so meekly
(before the Divine Commandment), and to see that marriage, true
marriage, is the rock on which God builds His world, it was not then
that I thought anything about that.
I only thought with bitter hatred of the accursed hypocrisies of
civilised society which, in the names of Law and Religion, had been
crushing the life out of the sweetest and purest woman on earth, merely
because she wished to be "mistress of herself and sovereign of her
soul."
What did I care about the future of the world? Or the movement of divine
truths? Or the new relations of man and woman in the good time that was
to come? Or the tremendous problems of lost and straying womanhood, or
the sufferings of neglected children, or the tragedies of the whole
girlhood of the world? What did I care about anything but my poor
martyred darling? The woman God gave me was mine and I could not give
her up--not now, after all she had gone through.
Sometime in the afternoon (heaven knows when) I went back to Sunny
Lodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the hearth-rug. My
mother was silent and trying not to let me see her swollen eyes. My dear
one was sleeping, had been sleeping all day long, the sleep of an angel.
Strange and frightening fact, nobody being able to remember that she had
ever been seen to sleep before!
After a while, sick and cold at heart, I went down to the shore where we
had played as children. The boat we sailed in was moored on the beach.
The tide was far out, making a noise on the teeth of the Rock, which
stood out against the reddening sky, stern, grand, gloomy.
Old Tommy the Mate came to the door of his cabin. I went into the quiet
smoky place with its earthen floor and sat in a dull torpor by the
hearth, under the sooty "laff" and rafters. The old man did not say a
word to me. He put some turf on the fire and then sat on a three-legged
stool at the other side of the hearth-place.
Once he got up and gave me a basin of buttermilk, then stirred the peats
and sat down again without speaking. Towards evening, when the rising
sea was growing louder, I got up to go. The old man followed me to the
door, and there, laying his hand on my arm he said:
"She's been beating to windward all her life, boy. But mind ye
this--_she's fetching the harbour all right at last_."
Going up the road I heard a band of music in the distance, and saw a
procession of people coming down. It was Father Dan's celebration of
thanksgiving to God for what was left of Daniel O'Neill's ill-gotten
wealth sent back from Rome for the poor.
Being in no humour to thank God for anything, I got over a sod hedge and
crossed a field until I came to a back gate to our garden, near to
"William Rufus's" burial place--stone overgrown with moss, inscription
almost obliterated.
On the path I met my mother, with baby, toddling and tumbling by her
side.
"How is she now?" I asked.
She was awake--had been awake these two hours, but in a strange kind of
wakefulness, her big angel eyes open and shining like stars as if
smiling at someone whom nobody else could see, and her lips moving as if
speaking some words which nobody else could hear.
"What art thou saying, _boght millish_?" my mother had asked, and after
a moment in which she seemed to listen in rapture, my darling had
answered:
"Hush! I am speaking to mamma--telling her I am leaving Isabel with
Christian Ann. And she is saying she is very glad."
We walked round to the front of the house until we came close under the
window of "Mary O'Neill's little room," which was wide open.
The evening was so still that we could hear the congregation singing in
the church and on the path in front of it.
Presently somebody began to sing in the room above. It was my
darling--in her clear sweet silvery voice which I have never heard the
like of in this world and never shall again.
After a moment another voice joined hers--a deep voice, the Reverend
Mother's.
All else was quiet. Not a sound on earth or in the air. A hush had
fallen on the sea itself, which seemed to be listening for my precious
darling's last breath. The sun was going down, very red in its setting,
and the sky was full of glory.
When the singing came to an end baby was babbling in my mother's
arms--"Bo-loo-la-la-ma-ma." I took her and held her up to the open
window, crying:
"Look, darling! Here's Girlie!"
There was no answer, but after another moment the Reverend Mother came
to the window. Her pale face was even paler than usual, and her lips
trembled. She did not speak, but she made the sign of the Cross.
And by that . . . I knew.
"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my cry."