"Only Father Donovan and Mrs. Conrad—and baby," she told me.

Then the doctors came back—the consultant first, trying to look cheerful, and the old doctor last, with a slow step and his head down, as if he had been a prisoner coming back to court to receive sentence.

"My lady," said the strange doctor, "you are a brave woman if ever there was one, so we have decided to tell you the truth about your condition."

And then he told me.

I was not afraid. I will not say that I was not sorry. I could have wished to live a little longer—especially now when (but for the Commandment of God) love and happiness seemed to be within my grasp.

But oh, the relief! There was something sacred in it, something supernatural. It was as if God Himself had come down to me in the bewildering maze that was haunted by the footsteps of my fate and led me out of it.

Yet why these poor weak words? They can mean so little to anybody except a woman who has been what I was, and she can have no need of them.

All fear had vanished from my thoughts. I had no fear for myself, I remembered, and none for baby. The only regret I felt was for Martin—he loved me so; there had never been any other woman in the world for him.

After a moment I thanked the doctors and hoped I had not given them too much trouble. Doctor Conrad seemed crushed into stupefaction and said nothing; but the strange doctor tried to comfort me by saying there would be no pain, and that my malady was of a kind that would probably make no outward manifestation.

Being a woman to the end I was very glad of that, and then I asked him if it would last long. He said No, not long, he feared, although everything was in God's hands and nobody could say certainly.

I was saying I was glad of that too, when my quick ears caught a sound of crying. It was Christian Ann, and Father Dan was hushing her. I knew what was happening—the good souls were listening at the bottom of the stairs.

My first impulse was to send nurse to say they were not to cry. Then I had half a mind to laugh, so that they might hear me and know that what I was going through was nothing. But finally I bethought me of Martin, and asked that they might both be brought up, for I had something to say to them.

After a moment they came into the room, Christian Ann in her simple pure dress, and Father Dan in his shabby sack coat, both looking very sorrowful, the sweet old children.

Then (my two dear friends standing together at the foot of the bed) I told them what the doctor had said, and warned them that they were to tell nobody else—nobody whatever, especially Martin.

"Leave me to tell him," I said. "Do you faithfully promise me?"

I could see how difficult it was for them to keep back their tears, but they gave me their word and that was all I wanted.

"My boy! My poor boy veen! He's thinking there isn't another woman in the world like her," said Christian Ann.

And then Father Dan said something about my mother extracting the same promise concerning myself, when I was a child at school.

After that the Blackwater doctor stepped up to say good-bye.

"I leave you in good hands, but you must let me come to see you again some day," he said, and then with a playful smile he added:

"They've got lots of angels up in heaven—we must try to keep some of them on earth, you know."

That was on the fifth of July, old Midsummer Day, which is our national day in Ellan, and flags were flying over many of the houses in the village.



ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

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.

I suppose I must have laughed at that, for the next I heard was:

"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 Elysees 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?

MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD

What I had done is easily told. I had gone straight to Daniel O'Neill himself, intending to know the truth of the story and to act accordingly.

Already I knew enough to scent mischief. I could not be so stupefied into blindness of what was going on under my eyes as not to see that the dirty question of money, and perhaps the dirtier question of the aims and expectations of the woman MacLeod, were at the root of the matter that was distressing my darling.

Daniel O'Neill had left the Big House and gone to live in his mother's old cottage for two reasons—first, to delude the law into the idea that he was himself utterly ruined by the bankruptcy to which he had brought the whole island; and next, to gratify the greed of his mistress, who wanted to get him to herself at the end, so that he might be persuaded to marry her (if it were only on his death-bed) and so establish, against any claim of his daughter's, her widow's rights in what a husband leaves behind him—which is half of everything in Ellan.

What connection this had with the man's desire to get hold of the child I had yet to learn; but I meant to learn it without another hour's delay, so I set off for the cottage on the curragh.

It was growing dark, and not being sure of my way through the ever-changing bypaths of the bog land, I called on Father Dan to guide me. The old priest seemed to know my errand (the matter my darling had communicated as a secret being common knowledge), and at first he looked afraid.

"Well . . . yes, yes . . . why shouldn't I?" he said, and then, "Yes, I will, I will"—with the air of a man who had made up his mind to a daring enterprise.

Our curragh is a stretch of wild marsh lying over against the sea, undrained, only partly cultivated, half covered with sedge and sallow bushes, and consequently liable to heavy mists. There was a mist over it that night, and hence it was not easy even for Father Dan (accustomed to midnight visits to curragh cottages) to find the house which had once been the home of "Neale the Lord."

We rooted it out at last by help of the parish constable, who was standing at the corner of a by-road talking to the coachman of a gorgeous carriage waiting there, with its two splendid horses smoking in the thick night air.

When, over the shingle of what we call "the street," we reached the low straggling crofter-cottage under its thick trammon tree (supposed to keep off the evil spirits), I rapped with my knuckles at the door, and it was opened by a tall scraggy woman with a candle in her hand.

This was Nessy MacLeod, harder and uglier than ever, with her red hair combed up, giving her the appearance of a bunch of carrots over two stalks of rhubarb.

Almost before I had time to say that we had come to see Mr. O'Neill, and to step into the house while saying so, a hoarse, husky, querulous man's voice cried from within:

"Who is it, Nessy?"

It's Father Dan, and Martin . . . I mean Sir. . . ."

"That'll do," I said, and the next moment we were in the living-room—a bare, bleak, comfortless Curraghman's kitchen.

A more incongruous sight than we saw there human eyes never beheld.

Daniel O'Neill, a shadow of the big brute creature he once was, a shrivelled old man, with his bony hands scored and contracted like an autumn leaf, his shrunken legs scarcely showing through his baggy trousers, his square face whiter than the wall behind it, and a piece of red flannel hanging over his head like a cowl, sat in the elbow-chair at the side of the hearth-fire, while at a deal table, which was covered with papers that looked like law deeds and share certificates (being stamped and sealed), sat the Bishop of the island, and its leading lawyer, Mr. Curphy.

On hearing my name and seeing me enter the house, Daniel O'Neill lost all control of himself. He struggled to his feet by help of a stick, and as I walked up to him he laid hold of me.

"You devil!" he cried. "You infernal villain! You. . . ."

But it is of no use to repeat what else he said in the fuming of his rage, laying hold of me by the collar of my coat, and tugging at it as if he would drag me to his feet.

I was half sorry for the man, badly as I thought of him, so I only opened his hand (easy enough to do, for the grip was gone from it) and said:

"You're an old man, sir, and you're a sick man—don't tempt me to forget that you are the father of Mary O'Neill. Sit down."

He sat down, breathless and broken, without another word. But the Bishop, with a large air of outraged dignity, faced about to poor Father Dan (who was standing near the door, turning his round hat in his trembling hands) and said:

"Father Donovan, did you know that Mr. O'Neill was very ill?"

"I did, Monsignor," said Father Dan.

"And that a surgeon is coming from London to perform an operation upon him—did you know that?"

"I did, Monsignor."

"Did you know also that I was here to-night to attend with Mr. Curphy to important affairs and perhaps discharge some sacred duties?"

"I knew that too, Monsignor."

"Then," said the Bishop, pointing at me, "how dare you bring this man here—this man of all others, who has been the chief instrument in bringing shame and disgrace upon our poor sick friend and his deeply injured family?"

"So that's how you look at it, is it, Monsignor?"

"Yes, sir, that is how I look at it, and I am sorry for a priest of my Church who has so weakened his conscience by sympathy with notorious sinners as to see things in any other light."

"Sinners, Bishop?"

"Didn't you hear me, Father Donovan? Or do you desire me to use a harder name for them—for one of them in particular, on whom you have wasted so much weak sentimentality, to the injury of your spiritual influence and the demoralisation of your parish. I have warned you already. Do you wish me to go further, to remove you from your Presbytery, or perhaps report your conduct to those who have power to take the frock off your back? What standard of sanctity for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony do you expect to maintain while you degrade it by openly associating with a woman who has broken her marriage vows and become little better . . . I grieve to say it [with a deep inclination of the head towards the poor wreck in the elbow-chair] little better than a common. . . ."

I saw the word that was coming, and I was out in an instant. But there was somebody before me. It was Father Dan. The timid old priest seemed to break in one moment the bonds of a life-long tyranny.

"What's that you say, Monsignor?" he cried in a shrill voice. "I degrade the sacrament of Holy Matrimony? Never in this world! But if there's anybody in the island of Ellan who has done that same every day of his life, it's yourself, and never more cruelly and shamefully than in the case we're talking of at this present speaking."

"I'm not used to this kind of language from my clergy, Father Donovan," began the Bishop, but before he could say more Father Dan caught him up by crying:

"Perhaps not, Monsignor. But you've got to hear for once, and that's now. When this man [pointing to Daniel O'Neill] for his own purposes wanted to marry his daughter (who was a child and had no choice in the matter) to one of another faith, a man who didn't believe in the sacrament of marriage as we know it, who was it that paved the way for him?"

"You actually mean that I. . . ."

"I mean that without your help, Monsignor, a good girl could never have been married to a bad man. You didn't act in ignorance, either. When somebody told you—somebody who is here now—that the man to whom you were going to marry that innocent girl was a notorious loose liver, a profligate, a reprobate, a betrayer of women, and a damned scoundrel. . . ."

"Go on, Father Dan; that's God's own name for him," I said, when the old priest caught his breath for a moment, terrified by the word that had burst from his lips.

"Let's have an end of this," said the Bishop mightily.

"Wait a bit, sir," I said, and then Father Dan went on to say how he had been told there was nothing to my story, and how he had been forbidden to inquire into it.

"That's how you made me a party to this wicked marriage, God and his Holy Mother pardon me! And now that it has come to the end you might have expected, and the poor helpless child who was bought and sold like a slave is in the position of the sinner, you want me to cut her off, to turn the hearts of all good people against her, to cast her out of communion, to make her a thing to point the finger at—me, her spiritual father who baptized her, taking her out of the arms of the angel who bore her and giving her to Christ—or if I won't you'll deprive me of my living, you'll report me to Rome, you'll unfrock me. . . ."

"Do it, Monsignor," cried Father Dan, taking a step nearer to the Bishop and lifting a trembling hand over his head. "Do it, if our holy Church will permit you, and I'll put a wallet on my old shoulders and go round the houses of my parish in my old age, begging a bite of bread and a basin of meal, and sleeping under a thorn bush, rather than lay my head on my pillow and know that that poor victim of your wicked scheming is in the road."

The throbbing and breaking of the old priest's voice had compelled me to drop my head, and it was not until I heard the sneck of the lock of the outer door that I realised that, overcome by his emotion, he had fled from the house.

"And now I guess you can follow your friend," said Daniel O'Neill.

"Not yet, sir," I answered; "I have something to say first."

"Well, well, what is it, please?" said the lawyer sharply and insolently, looking to where I was standing with folded arms at one side of the hearth-place.

"You'll hear soon enough, Master Curphy," I answered.

Then, turning back to Daniel O'Neill, I told him what rumour had reached my dear one of his intentions with regard to her child, and asked him to say whether there was any truth in it.

"Answer the man, Curphy," said Daniel O'Neill, and thereupon the lawyer, with almost equal insolence, turned to me and said:

"What is it you wish to know, sir?"

"Whether, if Mary O'Neill is unable from any cause to keep control of her child (which God forbid!), her father intends to take possession of it."

"Why shouldn't he? If the mother dies, for instance, her father will be the child's legal guardian."

"But if by that time the father is dead too—what then?"

"Then the control of the child will—with the consent of the court—devolve upon his heir and representative."

"Meaning this lady?" I asked, pointing to the woman MacLeod, who was now standing at the back of Daniel O'Neill's chair.

"Possibly."

"And what will she do with it?"

"Do with it?"

The lawyer was running his fingers through his long beard and trying to look perplexed.

"Mr. Curphy, I'll ask you not to pretend to be unable to understand me. If and when this lady gets possession of Mary O'Neill's child, what is she going to do with it?"

"Very well," said the advocate, seeing I meant business, "since my client permits me to speak, I'll tell you plainly. Whatever the child's actual parentage . . . perhaps you know best. . . ."

"Go on, sir."

"Whatever the child's parentage, it was born in wedlock. Even the recent divorce proceedings have not disturbed that. Therefore we hold that the child has a right to the inheritance which in due time should come to Mary O'Neill's offspring by the terms of the settlement upon her husband."

It was just as I expected, and every drop of my blood boiled at the thought of my darling's child in the hands of that frozen-hearted woman.

"So that is the law, is it?"

"That is the law in Ellan."

"In the event of Mary O'Neill's death, and her father's death, her child and all its interests will come into the hands of. . . ."

"Of her father's heir and representative."

"Meaning, again, this lady?"

"Probably."

The woman at the back of the chair began to look restless.

"I don't know, sir," she said, "if your repeated references to me are intended to reflect upon my character, or my ability to bring up the child well and look after its interests properly."

"They are, madam—they most certainly and assuredly are," I answered.

"Daniel!" she cried.

"Be quiet, gel," said Daniel O'Neill. "Let the man speak. We'll see what he has come for presently. Go on, sir."

I took him at his word, and was proceeding to say that as I understood things it was intended to appeal to the courts in order to recover (nominally for the child) succession to the money which had been settled on Mary O'Neill's husband at the time of their marriage, when the old man cried, struggling again to his feet:

"There you are! The money! It's the money the man's after! He took my daughter, and now he's for taking my fortune—what's left of it, anyway. He shan't, though! No, by God he shan't! . . . Go back to your woman, sir. Do you hear me?—your woman, and tell her that neither you nor she shall touch one farthing of my fortune. I'm seeing to that now. It's what we're here for to-night—before that damnable operation to-morrow, for nobody knows what will come of it. She has defied me and ruined me, and made me the byword of the island, God's curse on her. . . ."

"Daniel! Daniel!" cried the MacLeod woman, trying to pacify the infuriated madman and to draw him back to his seat.

I would have given all I had in the world if Daniel O'Neill could have been a strong man at that moment, instead of a poor wisp of a thing with one foot in the grave. But I controlled myself as well as I could and said:

"Mr. O'Neill, your daughter doesn't want your fortune, and as for myself, you and your money are no more to me than an old hen sitting on a nest of addled eggs. Give it to the lady at the back of your chair—she has earned it, apparently."

"Really," said the Bishop, who had at length recovered from Father Dan's onslaught. "Really, Sir What-ever-your-name is, this is too outrageous—that you should come to this lonely house at this time of night, interrupting most urgent business, not to speak of serious offices, and make injurious insinuations against the character of a respectable person—you, sir, who had the audacity to return openly to the island with the partner of your sin, and to lodge her in the house of your own mother—your own mother, sir, though Heaven knows what kind of mother it can be who harbours her son's sin-laden mistress, his woman, as our sick friend says. . . ."

Lord! how my hands itched! But controlling myself again, with a mighty effort I said:

"Monsignor, I don't think I should advise you to say that again."

"Why not, sir?"

"Because I have a deep respect for your cloth and should be sorry to see it soiled."

"Violence!" cried the Bishop, rising to his feet. "You threaten me with violence? . . . Is there no policeman in this parish, Mr. Curphy?"

"There's one at the corner of the road, Bishop," I said. "I brought him along with me. I should have brought the High Bailiff too, if there had been time. You would perhaps be no worse for a few witnesses to the business that seems to be going on here."

Saying this, as I pointed to the papers on the table, I had hit harder than I knew, for both the Bishop and the lawyer (who had also risen) dropped back into their seats and looked at each other with expressions of surprise.

Then, stepping up to the table, so as to face the four of them, I said, as calmly and deliberately as I could:

"Now listen to me. I am leaving this island in about three weeks time, and expect to be two years—perhaps three years—away. Mary O'Neill is going with me—as my wife. She intends to leave her child in the care of my mother, and I intend to promise her that she may set her mind at ease that it shall never under any circumstances be taken away. You seem to have made up your minds that she is going to die. Please God she may disappoint your expectations and come back strong and well. But if she does not, and I have to return alone, and if I find that her child has been removed from the protection in which she left it, do you know what I shall do?"

"Go to the courts, I presume," said the lawyer.

"Oh dear, no! I'll go to no courts, Mr. Curphy. I'll go to the people who have set the courts in motion—which means that I'll go to you and you and you and you. Heaven knows how many of us may be living when that day comes; but as surely as I am, if I find that the promise I made to Mary O'Neill has been a vain one, and that her child is under this woman's control and the subject of a lawsuit about this man's money, and she in her grave, as surely as the Lord God is above us there isn't one soul of you here present who will be alive the following morning."

That seemed to be enough for all of them. Even old Daniel O'Neill (the only man in the house who had an ounce of fight in him) dropped his head back in his chair, with his mouth wide open and his broken teeth showing behind his discoloured lips.

I thought Father Dan would have been waiting for me under the trammon on "the street," but he had gone back to the Presbytery and sent Tommy the Mate to lead me through the mist and the by-lanes to the main road.

The old salt seemed to have a "skute" into the bad business which had brought out the Bishop and the lawyer at that late hour, and on parting from me at the gate of Sunny Lodge he said:

"Lord-a-massy me, what for hasn't ould Tom Dug a fortune coming to him?"

And when I asked him what he would do with a fortune if he had one he answered:

"Do? Have a tunderin' [thundering] good law-shoot and sattle some o' them big fellas."

Going to bed in the "Plough" that night, I had an ugly vision of the scene being enacted in the cottage on the curragh (a scene not without precedent in the history of the world, though the priesthood as a whole is so pure and noble)—the midnight marriage of a man dying in unnatural hatred of his own daughter (and she the sweetest woman in the world) while the priest and the prostitute divided the spoils.

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]



ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH CHAPTER

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.



MARY O'NEILL'S LETTER TO MARTIN CONRAD

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!

MARY O'NEILL.



MARY O'NEILL'S LAST NOTE WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAVES OF HER MISSAL

AUGUST 9-10.

It is all over. I have given him my book. My secret is out. He knows now. I almost think he has known all along.

I had dressed even more carefully than usual, with nurse's Irish lace about my neck as a collar, and my black hair brushed smooth in my mother's manner, and when I went downstairs by help of my usual kind crutch (it is wonderful how strong I have been to-day) everybody said how much better I was looking.

Martin was there, and he took me into the garden. It was a little late in the afternoon, but such a sweet and holy time, with its clear air and quiet sunshine—one of those evenings when Nature is like a nun "breathless with adoration."

Although I had a feeling that it was to be our last time together we talked on the usual subjects—the High Bailiff, the special license, "the boys" of the Scotia who were coming over for my wedding, and how some of them would have to start out early in the morning.

But it didn't matter what we talked about. It was only what we felt, and I felt entirely happy—sitting there in my cushions, with my white hand in his brown one, looking into his clear eyes and ruddy face or up to the broad blue of the sky.

The red sun had begun to sink down behind the dark bar of St. Mary's Rock, and the daisies in the garden to close their eyes and drop their heads in sleep, when Martin became afraid of the dew.

Then we went back to the house—I walking firmly, by Martin's side, though I held his arm so close.

The old doctor was in his consulting room, nurse was in my room, and we could hear Christian Ann upstairs putting baby into her darling white cot—she sleeps with grandma now.

The time came for me to go up also, and then I gave him my book, which I had been carrying under my arm, telling him to read the last pages first.

Although we had never spoken of my book before he seemed to know all about it; and it flashed upon me at that moment that, while I thought I had been playing a game of make-believe with him, he had been playing a game of make-believe with me, and had known everything from the first. There was a certain relief in that, yet there was a certain sting in it, too. What strange creatures we are, we women!

For some moments we stood together at the bottom of the stairs, holding each other's hands. I was dreadfully afraid he was going to break down as he did at Castle Raa, and once again I had that thrilling, swelling feeling (the most heavenly emotion that comes into a woman's life, perhaps) that I, the weak one, had to strengthen the strong.

It was only for a moment, though, and then he put his great gentle arms about me, and kissed me on the lips, and said, silently but oh, so eloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God bless you!"

Then I walked upstairs alone, quite alone, and when I reached the top he was still at the bottom looking up at me. I smiled down to him, then walked firmly into my room and up to my bed, and then . . . down, all my strength gone in a moment.

* * * * *

I have had such a wonderful experience during the night. It was like a dream, and yet something more than a dream. I don't want to make too much of it—to say that it was a vision or any supernatural manifestation such as the blessed Margaret Mary speaks about. Perhaps it was only the result of memory operating on my past life, my thoughts and desires. But perhaps it was something higher and more spiritual, and God, for my comforting, has permitted me to look for one moment behind the veil.

I thought it was to-morrow—my wedding day, and the day of Father Dan's thanksgiving celebration—and I was sitting by my French window (which was wide open) to look at the procession.

I seemed to see everything—Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen in their clean "ganzies," the village people in their Sunday clothes, the Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their coloured badges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the mothers with babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge.

I thought the procession passed under my window and went on to the church, which was soon crowded, leaving numbers of people to kneel on the path in front, as far down as the crumbling gate piers which lean towards each other, their foundations having given way.

Then I thought Benediction began, and when the congregation sang I sang also. I heard myself singing:

"Mater purissima, Ora pro nobis."

Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the Reverend Mother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her deep rich voice under mine:

"Mater castissima Ora pro nobis."

Then I thought the Ora ended, and in the silence that followed it I heard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel path below. I had closed my eyes, yet I seemed to see them, for I felt as if I were under some strange sweet anaesthetic which had taken away all pain but not all consciousness.

Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift baby up to me, and say something about her.

I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then there was darkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody sobbing and Father Dan saying, as he did on the morning my mother died:

"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful paradise after all her suffering."

After that the darkness became still deeper, and the voices faded away, and then gradually a great light came, a beautiful, marvellous, celestial light, such as Martin describes when he speaks about the aurora, and then . . . I was on a broad white snowy plateau, and Martin was walking by my side.

How wonderful! How joyful! How eternally glorious!

* * * * *

It is 4 A.M. Some of "the boys" will be on their way to my wedding. Though I have been often ashamed of letting them come I am glad now for his sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his comrades about him he will control himself and be strong.

* * * * *

Such a peaceful morning! There is just light enough to see St. Mary's Rock. It is like a wavering ghost moving in the vapour on the face of the deep. I can hear the far-off murmur of the sea. It is like the humming in a big shell. A bird is singing in the garden and the swallows are twittering in a nest under the thatch. A mist is lying over the meadows, and the tree tops seem to be floating between the earth and the sky.

How beautiful the world is!

Very soon the mist will rise, and the day will break and the sun will come again and . . . there will be no more night.

[END OF THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL]

MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD

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."



THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

I saw him off at Tilbury when he left England on his last Expedition. Already he was his own man once more. After the blinding, stunning effect of the great event there had been a quick recuperation. His spirit had risen to a wonderful strength and even a certain cheerfulness.

I did not find it hard to read the secret of this change. It was not merely that Time, the great assuager, had begun to do its work with him, but that he had brought himself to accept without qualm or question Mary O'Neill's beautiful belief (the old, old belief) in the immortality of personal love, and was firmly convinced that, freed from the imprisonment of the flesh, she was with him every day and hour, and that as long as he lived she always would be.

There was nothing vague, nothing fantastic, nothing mawkish, nothing unmanly about this belief, but only the simple faith of a steady soul and a perfectly clear brain. It was good to see how it braced a strong man for life to face Death in that way.

As for his work I found him quite hopeful. His mission apart, I thought he was looking forward to his third trip to the Antarctic, in expectation of the silence and solitude of that strengthening region.

As I watched the big liner that was taking him away disappear down the Thames I had no more doubt that he would get down to the South Pole, and finish his task there, than that the sun would rise the following morning.

Whatever happens this time he will "march breast forward."



MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR

WIRELESS—ANTARCTIC CONTINENT (via MACQUARIE ISLAND AND RADIO HOBART 16).

Arrived safe. All well. Weather excellent. Blue sky. Warm. Not a breath of wind. Sun never going down. Constellations revolving without dipping. Feel as if we can see the movement of the world. Start south to-morrow. Calmer than I have ever been since She was taken from me. But She was right. She is here. "Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot quench it."

THE END