Sir Hall Caine

“ My throat was fluttering—I could not answer him.
"I can't," he said. "I never shall—never as long as I live. No prayers will ever help me to forget you."
I could not speak. I dared not look at him. After a moment he said in a thicker voice:
"And you . . . will you be able to forget me? By praying to God will you be able to wipe me out of your mind?"
I felt as if something were strangling me.
"A woman lives in her heart, doesn't she?" he said. "Love is everything to her . . . everything except her religion. Will it be possible—this renunciation . . . will it be possible for you either?" ”

“ There would have been no trouble with your husband then—not about me at all events. But what are you thinking of doing?"
"Getting a divorce," I answered, firmly, for my heart was now aflame.
If I had held a revolver in Aunt Bridget's face she could not have looked more shocked.
"Mary O'Neill, are you mad?" she cried. "Divorce indeed! No woman of our family has ever disgraced herself like that. What will your father say? What's to happen to Betsy Beauty? What are people going to think about me?"
I answered that I had not made my marriage, and those who had made it must take the consequences. ”

“ The sound was repeated, but louder, clearer, shriller than before. There could be no mistaking it now. It was Nature's eternal signal that out of the womb of silence a living soul had been born into the world.
"It's over," said my father.
"Glory be to God and all the Saints!" said Father Dan.
"That'll beat 'em," cried my father, and he leapt to his feet and laughed.
Going to the door of the room, he flung it open. The servants in the hall were now whispering eagerly, and one of them, the gardener, Tom Dug, commonly called Tommy the Mate, stepped out and asked if he ought to ring the big bell. ”

“ A cold, grey, joyless, outcast city, cut off from the rest of London by an invisible barrier more formidable than a wall; a city in which the inhabitants seemed to live cold, grey, joyless lives, all the same that they joked and laughed; a city under perpetual siege, the siege of Poverty, in the constant throes of civil war, the War of Want, the daily and hourly fight for food.
If there were other parts of the East End (and I am sure there must be) where people live simple, natural, human lives, I did not see them that day, for my course was down the principal thoroughfares only. ”

“ After that I told her of all I had passed through since as a result of my love for Martin—how I had parted from him when he went down to the Antarctic; how I had waited for him in London; how I had sacrificed family and friends and home, and taken up poverty and loneliness and hard work for him; how I had fallen into fathomless depths of despair when I thought I had lost him; and how joy and happiness had returned only when God, in His gracious goodness, had given him back.
"No, no, no", I cried. "My love for Martin can never be overcome or forgotten—never as long as I live in the world!" ”

“ My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out for salvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him what Father Dan had said I was to say.
"Father Dan is a saint and I love him," he said. "But what can he know—what can any priest know of a situation like this? The law of man has tied you to this brute, but the law of God has given you to me. Why should a marriage service stand between us?"
"But it does," I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare not break the law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I cannot give up my religion." ”

“ It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; but turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the great and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me such strength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure in my walk through the world with charity and forgiveness.
But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in the fires of passion!
As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband's bedroom from mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently at my husband's closed door. ”

“ My life was becoming as cold as an empty house, and I was beginning to regret the eagerness with which I had removed my husband from a scene in which he had at least lived the life of a rational creature, when an unexpected event brought me a thrill of passing pleasure.
Our seats in the saloon were at the top of the doctor's table, and the doctor himself was a young Irishman of three or four-and-twenty, as bright and breezy as a March morning and as racy of the soil as new-cut peat.
Hearing that I was from Ellan he started me by asking if by chance I knew Martin Conrad. ”

“ A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know I had to, and if. . . ."
"But if she can't, Auntie?"
"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about it."
It was useless to say more, so I rose to go.
"Yes, go," said Aunt Bridget. "I'm so bothered with other people's business that my head's all through-others. And, Mary O'Neill," she said, looking after me as I passed through the door, "for mercy's sake do brighten up a hit, and don't look as if marrying a husband was like taking a dose of jalap. It isn't as bad as that, anyway." ”

“ 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 she took baby out of my arms, removed her bonnet and pelisse, lifted her barrow-coat to examine her limbs, asked her age, kissed her on the arms, the neck and the legs, and praised her without measure.
"And what's her name, ma'am?"
"Mary Isabel, but I wish her to be called Isabel."
"Isabel! A beautiful name too! Fit for a angel, ma'am. And she is a little angel, bless her! Such rosy cheeks! Such a ducky little mouth! Such blue eyes—blue as the bluebells in the cemet'ry. She's as pretty as a waxwork, she really is, and any woman in the world might be proud to nurse her." ”

“ And then in that happiness that is beyond all earthly bliss—the happiness of a mother when she first clasps her baby to her breast—I began to cry.
I had not cried for months—not since that night in Ellan which I did not wish to remember any more—but now my tears gushed out and ran down my face like rain.
I cried on Martin once more—I could not help it. And looking down at the closed eyes of my child my soul gushed out in gratitude to God, who had sent me this for all I had suffered.
"Hush, hush! You will do yourself a mischief and it will be bad for the milk," said the nurse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If he is a good man the mere sight of your grief will torture him. The better man he is the more will he suffer. If you were a runaway nun he would wish to take you back to your convent, for though it might tear his heart out to part with you, he would want to restore your soul. But being a wife who has broken her marriage vows he will never be able to do anything. An immense and awful shadow will stand between you and darken every hour of your lives that is left. ”

“ I am . . . to . . . to live with you without marriage?"
"It's the only thing possible, isn't it?" he said. And then he tried to show me that love was everything, and if people loved each other nothing else mattered—religious ceremonies were nothing, the morality of society was nothing, the world and its back-biting was nothing.
The great moment had come for me at last, and though I felt torn between love and pity I had to face it.
"Martin, I . . . I can't do it," I said.
He looked steadfastly into my face for a moment, but I dare not look back, for I knew he was suffering. ”

“ Perhaps it was only the striking of the cuckoo clock in my room.
"What are we doing?" I said.
Everything had rolled back on me—my marriage, Father Dan's warning, my promise to Martin's mother.
"Where are we?" I said.
"Hush! Don't speak," said Martin. "Let us think of nothing to-night—nothing except our love."
"Don't say that," I answered. "We are not free to love each other," and then, trying to liberate myself from his encircling arms I cried:
"God help me! God forgive me!"
"Wait!" said Martin, holding me a moment longer. ”

“ When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare with a sense of being pursued and the feeling which a nervous woman has when she is going down a dark corridor at night—that noiseless footsteps are coming behind, and a hand may at any moment be laid on her shoulder.
But nobody troubled me in the streets and the only person in our boarding-house who seemed to suspect me was our landlady. She said nothing, but when my lip was quivering while the old colonel read that cruel word about Martin I caught her little grey eyes looking aslant at me. ”

“ I was telling myself that as surely as my flight became known Martin's name would be linked with mine, and the honour that was dearer to me than, my own would be buried in disgrace.
O God! O God! Why should Nature be so hard and cruel to a woman? Why should it be permitted that, having done no worse than obey the purest impulses of my heart, the iron law of my sex should rise up to condemn both me and the one who was dearer to my soul than life itself? ”

“ The moral of all this was that I must renounce Martin Conrad, wash my heart clean of my love of him, shun the temptation of seeing him again, and if possible forget him altogether.
"It will be hard. I know it will he hard, but. . . ."
"It will be quite impossible," I said as well as I could, for my very lips were trembling.
I had been shaken to the depths of my soul by what the Reverend Mother said, but remembering Martin's warning I now struggled to resist her.
"Two years ago, while I was living with my husband I tried to do that and I couldn't," I said. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The barrier that has divided us is down . . . now we can be married at any time."
I was so overcome by Martin's splendid courage, so afraid to believe fully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long had come to me at last, that for some time I could not speak. And when I did speak, though my heart was clamouring loud, I only said:
"But do you really think that . . . that we can now be husband and wife?"
"Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I do think it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough, my poor girl. ”

“ And then the cheery sunshine of the cosy room began to fade away.
Father Dan fumbled the silver cross which hung over his cassock (a sure sign of his nervousness) , and said with a grave face and in a voice all a-tremble with emotion:
"My child. . . ."
"Yes?"
"You believe that I wouldn't pain or distress or shock you if I could avoid it?"
"Indeed I do."
"Yet I am going to pain and distress and shock you now. I . . . I cannot marry you to Martin Conrad. I daren't. The Church thinks that you are married already—that you are still the wife of your husband." ”

“ By six o'clock the wind had risen to the force of a hurricane. The last of the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the bare branches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louder than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore, was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes the clashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash of billows over the port-holes of a ship at sea.
"Pity for the poor folk with their fireworks," said Father Dan. ”

“ Somebody was digging in the garden. It was the doctor in his shirt sleeves.
"Good morning, doctor," I called, speaking over the fence.
He rested on his spade and looked up, but did not speak for a moment.
"Don't you know who I am?" I asked.
"Why yes, of course; you must be. . . ."
Without finishing he turned his head towards the porch and cried:
"Mother! Mother! Come and see who's here at last!"
Martin's mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I thought, but with the same dear womanly face over her light print frock, which was as sweet as may-blossom. ”

“ Father Dan knows perfectly that your marriage was no marriage at all—only a sordid bit of commercial bargaining, in which your husband gave you his bad name for your father's unclean money. It was no marriage in any other sense either, and might have been annulled if there had been any common honesty in annulment. And now that it has tumbled to wreck and ruin, as anybody might have seen it would do, you are told that you are bound to it to the last day and hour of your life! After all you have gone through—all you have suffered—never to know another hour of happiness as long as you live! ”

“ I should get money, not a great deal perhaps, yet enough for baby and me, that we might have that cottage in the country, covered with creepers and roses, where Isabel would run about the grass by and by, and pluck the flowers in the garden.
"So what have you got to cry about, you ridiculous thing," I thought while I hurried along, with a high step now, as if my soul had been in my feet.
But a mother's visions of the future are like a mirage (always gleaming with the fairy palaces which her child is to inhabit some day) , and I am not the first to find her shadows fade away. ”

“ I awoke on Wednesday morning in a kind of spiritual and physical fever. Every conflicting emotion which a woman can experience in the cruel battle between her religion and her love seemed to flood body and soul—joy, pain, pride, shame, fear, rapture—so that I determined (not without cause) to make excuse of a headache to stay in bed.
Although it was the last day of Martin's visit, and I charged myself with the discourtesy of neglecting him, as well as the folly of losing the few remaining hours of his company, I thought I could not without danger meet him again. ”

“ I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go off in their four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while with a fast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with Martin, having, as I thought, so much and such serious things to say to him.
A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the Westminster Pier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like another woman. It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our much-maligned London is the brightest and best, and the biggest city in the world is also the most beautiful. ”

“ Light as my footsteps were, the landing was creaking under me. I knew that the floors of the grim old Castle sometimes made noises when nobody walked on them, but none the less I felt afraid.
Half way to Martin's door I stopped. A ghostly hand seemed to be laid on my shoulder and a ghostly voice seemed to say in my ear:
"Wait! Reflect! If you do what you are thinking of doing what will happen? You will become an outcast. The whole body of your own sex will turn against you. You will be a bad woman." ”

“ With a proud lift of his white head my father pointed out the beauties of his new possession, while my intended husband, with his monocle to his eye, looked on with a certain condescension, and answered with a languid humour that narrowly bordered on contempt.
"Oak, sir, solid oak," said my father, rapping with his knuckles on the tall, dark, heavy wainscoting.
"As old as our hearts and as hard as our heads, I suppose," said Lord Raa.
"Harder than some, sir," said my father.
"Exactly," said Lord Raa in his slow drawl, and then there was general laughter. ”