The Woman Thou Gavest Me; Being the Story of Mary O'Neill. Sir Hall Caine
yet. … And yet. …
MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
And yet I was a fool, or in spite of everything I should have spoken to Daniel O'Neill before he left Rome. I should have said to him:
"Do you know that the man to whom you are going to marry your daughter is a profligate and a reprobate? If you do know this, are you deliberately selling her, body and soul, to gratify your lust of rank and power and all the rest of your rotten aspirations?"
That is what I ought to have done, but didn't do. I was afraid of being thought to have personal motives—of interfering where I wasn't wanted, of butting in when I had no right.
Yet I felt I had a right, and I had half a mind to throw up everything and go back to Ellan. But the expedition was the big chance I had been looking forward to and I could not give it up.
So I resolved to write. But writing isn't exactly my job, and it took me a fortnight to get anything done to my satisfaction. By that time we were at Port Said, and from there I posted three letters—the first to Daniel O'Neill, the second to Bishop Walsh, the third to Father Dan.
Would they reach in time? If so, would they be read and considered or resented and destroyed?
I did not know. I could not guess. And then I was going down into the deep Antarctic night, where no sound from the living world could reach me.
What would happen before I could get back? Only God could say.
M.C.
SECOND PART
MY MARRIAGE
TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
Notwithstanding my father's anxiety to leave Rome we travelled slowly and it was a week before we reached Ellan. By that time my depression had disappeared, and I was quivering with mingled curiosity and fear at the thought of meeting the man who was to be my husband.
My father, for reasons of his own, was equally excited, and as we sailed into the bay at Blackwater he pointed out the developments which had been made under his direction—the hotels, theatres, dancing palaces and boarding houses that lined the sea-front, and the electric railways that ran up to the tops of the mountains.
"See that?" he cried. "I told them I could make this old island hum."
On a great stone pier that stood deep into the bay, a crowd of people were waiting for the arrival of the steamer.
"That's nothing," said my father. "Nothing to what you see at the height of the season."
As soon as we had drawn up alongside the pier, and before the passengers had landed, four gentlemen came aboard, and my heart thumped with the thought that my intended husband would be one of them; but he was not, and the first words spoken to my father were—
"His lordship's apologies, sir. He has an engagement to-day, but hopes to see you at your own house to-morrow morning."
I recognised the speaker as the guardian (grown greyer and even less prepossessing) who had crossed with the young Lord Raa when he was going up to Oxford; and his companions were a smooth-faced man with searching eyes who was introduced as his lordship's solicitor from London, a Mr. Curphy, whom I knew to be my father's advocate, and my dear old Father Dan.
I was surprised to find Father Dan a smaller man than I had thought him, very plain and provincial, a little country parish priest, but he had the tender smile I always remembered, and the sweet Irish roll of the vowels that I could never forget.
"God bless you," he said. "How well you're looking! And how like your mother, Lord rest her soul! I knew the Blessed Virgin would take care of you, and she has, she has."
Three conveyances were waiting for us—a grand brougham for the Bishop, a big motor-car for the guardian and the London lawyer, and a still bigger one for ourselves.
"Well, s'long until to-morrow then," cried my father, getting up into the front row of his own ear, with the advocate beside him and Father Dan and myself behind.
On the way home Father Dan talked of the business that had brought me back, saying I was not to think too much of anything he might have said of Lord Raa in his letters, seeing that he had spoken from hearsay, and the world was so censorious—and then there was no measuring the miraculous influence that might be exercised by a good woman.
He said this with a certain constraint, and was more at ease when he spoke of the joy that ought to come into a girl's life at her marriage—her first love, her first love-letter, her wedding-day and her first baby, all the sweet and wonderful things of a new existence which a man could never know.
"Even an old priest may see that," he said, with a laugh and a pat of my hand.
We dropped Mr. Curphy at his house in Holmtown, and then my father sat with us at the back, and talked with tremendous energy of what he had done, of what he was going to do, and of all the splendours that were before me.
"You'll be the big woman of the island, gel, and there won't be a mother's son that dare say boo to you."
I noticed that, in his excitement, his tongue, dropping the suggestion of his adopted country, reverted to the racy speech of his native soil; and I had a sense of being with him before I was born, when he returned home from America with millions of dollars at his back, and the people who had made game of his father went down before his face like a flood.
Such of them as had not done so then (being of the "aristocracy" of the island and remembering the humble stock he came from) were to do so now, for in the second generation, and by means of his daughter's marriage, he was going to triumph over them all.
"We'll beat 'em, gel! My gough, yes, we'll beat 'em!" he cried, with a flash of his black eyes and a masterful lift of his eyebrows.
As we ran by the mansions of the great people of Ellan, he pointed them out to me with a fling of the arm and spoke of the families in a tone of contempt.
"See that? That's Christian of Balla-Christian. The man snubbed me six months ago. He'll know better six months to come. … That's Eyreton. His missus was too big to call on your mother—she'll call on you, though, you go bail. See yonder big tower in the trees? That's Folksdale, where the Farragans live. The daughters have been walking over the world like peacocks, but they'll crawl on it like cockroaches. … Hulloh, here's ould Balgean of Eagle Hill, in his grand carriage with his English coachman. … See that, though? See him doff his hat to you, the ould hypocrite? He knows something. He's got an inkling. Things travel. We'll beat 'em, gel, we'll beat 'em! They'll be round us like bees about a honeypot."
It was impossible not to catch the contagion of my father's triumphant spirits, and in my different way I found myself tingling with delight as I recognised the scenes associated with my childhood—the village, the bridge, the lane to Sunny Lodge and Murphy's Mouth, and the trees that bordered our drive.
Nearly everything looked smaller or narrower or lower than I had thought, but I had forgotten how lovely they all were, lying so snugly under the hill and with the sea in front of them.
Our house alone when we drove up to it seemed larger than I had expected, but my father explained this by saying:
"Improvements,